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HON. 



UNCLE SAM 



BY 

Viscount Valrose, 



New York : 
JOHN DELAY, 

8i6 Broadway. 
L&66. 



^~'\% 



w. 



Copyright 1888, 
By JOHN DELAY. 

fAil rights reserved.) 



PRESS OF 

JENKINS & McCOWAN, 
New York. 



CONTKNXS. 



CHAPTER • PAGE 

I. The Orators 5 

II. The Ladies 37 

III. The Rhymesters 56 

IV. The Pamphleteers 73 

V. The Journalists ^ 87 

VI. The Caricaturists 113 

VII. The Preachers 131 

VIII. The Poet 150 

IX. The Diplomats 165 

X. The Financiers 186 

XL The Wits. 193 

XII. The Philosophers 199 



Hon. Uncle Sam, 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ORATORS. 



When I left Paris for Washington, over 
seven years ago, I promised to send you, my 
dear Count, some sketches of the poHticians 
of Uncle Sam. 

I now proceed to fulfill my promise. 

If I were a cynic I would divide all politi- 
cians here into two classes. I would speak 
of the corrupt and the hypocritical. 

But I am not a cynic ; I am simply a cos- 
mopolitan, who has observed, read, tried to 
learn, and who now endeavors to impart his 
information to a valued friend. 

Suppose we treat of the public men of the 
United States as orators, pamphleteers, jour- 
nalists, diplomats, preachers, caricaturists; 
5 



6 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

and suppose we begin with a consideration 
of the orators. 

The arrangement is convenient, if not en- 
tirely logical. 

It would perhaps be a mistake to speak of 
the President as an orator. 

This big, portly man, with his bald head on 
its heavy neck, his dull blue eyes, his stifif, 
reddish-browai mustache, is a signer of doc- 
uments rather than a speaker of speeches. 
He has no personal magnetism, no readiness 
of words, no grace of action. He is slow, 
stolid, pompous at times. When he speaks 
in public he invariably places one hand in 
his Prince Albert coat, and one behind his 
back, stands square and immobile, and says 
what he has to say in a quiet, unimpassion- 
ed manner. 

The President is now in his fiftieth year. 
He comes of humble though honorable stock, 
received a common-school education, stud- 
ied law, and practiced it with mediocre suc- 
cess. Before he attained his present lofty 
position, in 1884, he was successively Sheriff 
of Erie County, Mayor of Buffalo, and Gov- 
ernor of New York. 

The President is a political accident. He 



THE ORATORS. 

happened to make a brilliant run for the 
Governorship of his State, and immediately 
some of the leaders of his party looked upon 
him as a Presidential candidate. By skillful 
management he was nominated, and by a 
slight majority he was elected. 

The President is a plodding and method- 
ical worker. 

He takes off his coat and buckles down to 
his task like any thousand-dollar clerk in the 
service. 

He is at his desk in the White House every 
morning at 9, works till i, takes an hour 
for lunch, works till 5, dines, drives. This 
routine is varied on reception-days and on 
days of Cabinet meetings. 

The confidential man of the President is 
Daniel S. Lamont. He is his private secre- 
tary. The opposition cartoonists represent 
him as a spaniel. 

The duties of the President are various 
and interesting. 

Head of the executive department of the 
Government, the President signs or vetoes 
bills, manufactures messages, issues procla- 
mations. 

The President is, by courtesy, bound to re- 



S HON. UNCLE SAM. 

ceive Senators, Representatives, judges, and 
the office-seekers endorsed by them. These 
gentlemen generally reward his hospitality 
by criticism and abuse — when he does not 
comply with their wishes. 

The President is doomed by his position 
to receive and smile upon foreign diplomats. 
He is not familiar with their language, and 
they use their language to dissimulate their 
opinion of him. 

The President is compelled, at public re- 
ceptions, to welcome to his parlor thousands 
of his countrymen, whose hand-shakes give 
him the rheumatism. 

For these services he receives $50,000 a 
year. 

The President is not, as I have already in- 
timated, an orator in the great acceptation 
of the word. But when before an humble 
audience, when he does not try to be rhetor- 
ical and important, he is singularly effective. 
I remember one of the little speeches, deliv- 
ered by him to the people of a village where 
he passed some of his young days, as particu- 
larly good. I reproduce it, and let you judge. 

'• As I find myself here once more in this pretty village, 



THE ORATORS. g 

the sports and pastimes of my youth come back to my 
mind. I take warm interest in being with you once more. 
Some of you, more than forty years ago, were my school- 
fellows and playmates. I can recall the faces of some 
who are now no more. I recall old Green Lake, and the 
fish I tried to catch and never did, and the traditional 
panther on its shores, which used to shorten my excur- 
sions thitherward. I've heard so much howling in the 
past two years that I don't think I should be frightened 
by the panther now. If some of the old householders 
were here, I could tell them who it was that used to take 
off their front gates. I mention this because I have been 
accused of so many worse crimes since I have been in 
Washington, that I consider taking off gates somewhat of 
a virtue. 

" And so, you see, I've taken you and your village with 
me, and, whether you are willing or not, I have made you 
a part of this Administration. I have been a sad truant, 
but now that you have seen me, keep your eyes ever upon 
me as I strive to do my duty in behalf of the people of 
this country. And it shall be my desire so to act that I 
may receive the approbation of these, my oldest and best 
friends." 

The President, in a word, is not a great 
orator or a great statesman, but he is, hke 
Jules Grevy, a safe executive officer, a man 
of respectable abilities. 

Mr. Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana, the 
rival of the President, is the grandson of a 
grandfather who fought a little battle with 



lO HON. UNCLE SAM. 

the Indians, beat them, and was elected Pres- 
ident of the United States. 

Mr. Benjamin Harrison is rather short in 
stature, shaky in appearance. 

He has small, squinting eyes, thin, reddish- 
brown hair, and a scragg-y, unbarbered white 
beard. 

Mr. Benjamin Harrison is as insignificant 
in appearance as M. Jules Ferry. 

He is also rather distant in his bearing. 

His reputation for integrity is good, but 
his fame as a lawyer or a statesman is not 
national. 

He is a local man, selected because he was 
available. 

Mr. Benjamin Harrison smokes, but he 
doesn't drink. 

When he gave a dinner to Mr. Blaine, 
some four years ago, there was no wine on 
the table. 

Mr. Harrison lives in Indianapolis. He 
resides in a plain, unpretentious, two-story 
house, set well back from the street, and 
shrouded from vulgar gaze by shrubbery 
and trees. 

A big picture of his grandfather. General 
Harrison, the old gentleman who beat the 



THE ORATORS. II 

Indians in that little battle and became 
President, hangs in the back parlor. 

Mr. Benjamin Harrison was in the Senate 
of the United States at Washington once 
upon a time, but nobody seems to remem- 
ber it. 

He didn't make any speeches to distin- 
guish himself. 

During the late war he was an officer in 
the army. 

His friends like to tell how he enlisted. 

One day he called on Governor Morton, 
of Indiana, to ask for the appointment of a 
friend to a military command. He found 
the great war Governor gloomy at the fail- 
ure to respond to the call for troops. He 
took his caller to the window, and, pointing 
to some housebuilders, marveled that they 
could work when on the morrow there might 
be no Government to protect their property. 

Young Harrison consulted no friend, not 
even his wife. He walked from the Govern- 
or's office to a hat shop, where he donned 
an army cap. Within an hour he was parad- 
ing behind a fife and drum. 

Mr. Harrison came out of the war a gen- 
eral. 



12 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Generals are as common in this country as 
gendarmes are with us. 

Two of the most prominent poHtical op- 
ponents of the President are men who at 
present hold no political office. 

They are Mr. James G. Blaine and Mr. 
Chauncey Depew. 

Both of these men are men of national 
reputation. 

Mr. Blaine has been, in the course of his 
life, a school teacher, a book canvasser, an 
editor, a Congressman, a Senator, a Secre- 
tary of State. 

Mr. Depew has also been a politician and 
a lawyer, but to-day he is president of the 
big system of railroads controlled by Van- 
derbilt. 

How slick, sleek, specious, are both these 
men ! 

They are what they call " smart " men here. 

Uncle Sam likes smartness above all things. 

Both Mr. Blaine and Mr. Depew are rich 
men, optimistic men, and both are orators. 

They dazzle the eyes, entrance the ears. 

Neither of them ever hems or haws. 

Neither of them forgets the names and 
faces of influential men. 



THE ORATORS. 



13 



Neither of them is ever at a loss. 

Put either of them before an audience in 
the smallest village, and he will say the right 
thing. 

When I read some of the speeches of Mr. 
Blaine and Mr. Depew, both smooth, oily- 
demagogues, I am reminded of what a 
parodist of Webster maintained that that 
orator once said to the citizens of a certain 
small city in New York State. 

" Men of Rochester, I am glad to see you, and I am 
glad to see your noble city. Gentlemen, I saw your falls, 
which I am told are one hundred and fifty feet high. 
That is a very interesting fact. Gentlemen, Rome had 
her Caesar, her Scipio, her Brutus, but Rome in her proud- 
est days never had a water-fall one hundred and fifty feet 
high ! Gentlemen, Greece had her Pericles, her Demos- 
thenes, and her Socrates, but Greece in her palmiest days 
never had a water-fall one hundred and fifty feet high ! 
Men of Rochester, go on ! No people ever lost their lib- 
erties who had a water-fall one hundred and fifty feet high !" 

The crowd applauds. 

A crowd is such an unreasoning mass ! 

Mr. Allen Thurman, of Ohio, is another 
prominent orator. 

The Democrats call him " the noblest 
Roman of them all." 



14 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



He has a striking, gray-haired head on a 
small body. 

He discards the mustache, but he wears 
a chin-beard. 

He is a fine lawyer and a well-read man. 

I hear our Moliere is one of his favorite 
authors. 

Mr. Thurman blows his nose vociferously 
in a red bandanna handkerchief. 

Now, the Democrats want to make him 
Vice-President. 

They like him. 

When he takes snuff, the whole Democracy 
of Uncle Sam sneezes. 

Mr. Blaine is tall, erect, high-shouldered. 

He has a sallow, intelligent face, encom- 
passed by a white beard. 

His dark eyes are restive and uncertain, 
behind heavy eyelids. 

His nose is prominent, bulbous, a nose that 
our Cham would have loved to caricature. 

His manners are urbane. 

He makes the most gracious bow in the 
land. 

They compare him here to Gladstone. 

He is more like Beaconsfield. 

Mr. Depew is rather corpulent. 



THE ORATORS. 1 5 

His face, clean-shaven save for small 
whiskers, indicates the self-sufficiency of a 
bank president plus the conscious goodness 
of a clerical. 

He reminds me somewhat of M. Pouyer- 
Quertier. 

Allow me, now, to present you to another 
type — Mr. Carl Schurz, of New York. 

He was born in Germany. 

tie speaks with an accent, and after much 
preparation. 

He has belonged to all parties in this coun- 
try, and is liked by none. 

He is one of the homeliest men in public 
life — tall, thin-legged, with a long, protrud- 
ing chin, a red beard, a flat nose. 

Mr. Schurz has been a tutor, a revolution- 
ist, an editor, a brigadier-general, an envoy- 
extraordinary, a secretary of department at 
Washington. 

He is now busy writing his memoirs. 

Any man can become anything in this 
land of Uncle Sam's. 

I have not told you that there are two great 
parties in this country. 

The dominant party is the Democratic, 
the minority is the Republican, party. 



1 6 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

The Democrats believe in a strict interpre- 
tation of the Constitution, in due power re- 
served to the States, in low tariff, in an ex- 
tensive foreign commerce. 

The Republicans maintain that there should 
be a broad construction of the Constitution ; 
that there should be a strong central govern- 
ment ; little power in the States ; protection 
of home industries by high tariff ; and lavish 
expenditure of the surplus money in the 
treasury for educational and commercial pur- 
poses. 

These, in rough, are the dividing lines of 
the two parties. 

However they may differ in other respects, 
they agree in one point. 

They are all, at any time, ready to take 
the emoluments of office. 

They both interpret Civil-Service Reform 
to mean that to the victor belong the loaves 
and fishes and post-offices, 

I have often attended the sessions of the 
Senate and of the House of Representatives 
in Washington. 

Let me hit off some of the prominent mem- 
bers for you. 

The Senate, I should first remark, is pre- 



THE ORATORS. 



17 



sided over by the Vice-President of the 
United States. 

There are two Senators from each State of 
the Union, and their salaries are $5,000 a 
year each, with twenty cents per mile where- 
with to travel to and from Washington. 

These comfortable wise men of the Senate 
— which has been called " the pleasantest 
club in the country " — are elected by the 
Legislature of their respective States for six 
years. 

The Democrats sit on one side of the Sen- 
ate Chamber, the Republicans on the other. 

They speak from their desks on the floor, 
and not, as with us, from a tribune. 

Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, is one of 
the senior members of the Senate. An old- 
time Republican, a former Secretary of the 
Treasury, he is an authority on negro suffrage 
and financial administration. 

He is a slight man as to physique, with a 
solemn face, a firm mouth, a stubby beard, 
and a vinegar expression. 

As an orator he is not a success. 

He is as ennuyeux as M. de Broglie. 

He deals in figures and policies and facts. 
He never lets rhetoric run away with him. 



l8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, is a vener- 
able looking- man. 

He has a head that Bonnat would love to 
paint. 

He is a severe partisan, a thorough lawyer, 
but he is not a magnetic speaker. When he 
gives his views in the Senate, he keeps his 
hands folded on his stomach, and proceeds 
slowly, and in a low tone. 

Senator Edmunds is a [chilly, unsympa- 
thetic man. 

I may compare him with M. Dufaure. 

Senator Evarts, of New York, is one of the 
ablest and wittiest men in the Senate. 

He is a great lawyer, a fine scholar, an 
agreeable after-dinner speaker. 

He has been Attorney-General, Counsel 
at the Geneva Tribunal, Secretary of the 
State. 

In personal appearance, though small of 
stature, he is remarkable. 

He has a big head on narrow shoulders. 
His hat is always tilted back from his intel- 
lectual brow. His clothes are seedy in the 
extreme. His collar and cravat are of a large 
and antique pattern. 

His sentences are interminable. 



THE ORATORS. 



19 



As I look at him I am reminded of an 
anecdote. 

Pardon my love of anecdotes. 

You remember what De Goncourt says of 
them. 

" L!a7iecdoie est la boutique a U7i sou de r his- 
toire!' 

When the Due de Choiseul, who was a 
remarkably lean man, was sent to London 
to negotiate a peace, Charles Townsend, 
being asked whether the French Govern- 
ment had sent the preliminaries of a treaty, 
answered that he did not know, but that 
they had assuredly sent the outline of an 
ambassador. 

In the same way it may be said that the 
State of New York has sent to the Senate, m 
the thin and fragile Mr. Evarts, the outline 
of a Senator. 

Senator Hiscock, of New York, tries to 
copy Lord Byron in his neckwear. 

His oratory, however, is not equal to his 
lordship's poetry. 

Senator Mahone. of Virginia, though the 
smallest man in the Senate, considers him- 
self one of the biggest. 

To a correspondent, who asked him for 



20 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

his views, he answered that he was not writ- 
ing history, he was making it. 

Senator Riddleberger, of Virginia, is the 
demagogic opponent of Great Britain. 

He takes every opportunity to attack her. 

They call that "twisting the lion's tail" 
here. 

It's a harmless pastime. 

Senator Vance, of North Carolina, is a 
fine racotitetu' of yarns such as men love to 
tell over the almonds and raisins at dessert. 

The periods of Senator Blackburn, of Ken- 
tucky, have not the brilliancy of the diamond 
pin which he is proud to wear on all occa- 
sions. 

Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, with his 
chubby face, his spectacles, his air of ultra 
respectability, looks and speaks like a col- 
lege professor. 

I think they call him the dinner-bell. 

When he begins to prose, there is certainly 
a strong current toward the lunch-room of 
the Senate, where whisky is called tea. 

Senator Gorman, of Maryland, does most 
of his oratory in lobbies and in bar-rooms. 

He is an authority on vacancies in offices 
and on their national game of base-ball. 



THE ORATORS. 21 

enator Ingalls, of Kansas, tall, thin, angu- 
lar, is the best-dressed man in the Senate, 
and one of its most scholarly speakers. 

He can be exceedingly bitter. 

He is an extreme partisan. 

When he gets excited, his eyes flash 
through his glasses. 

He does not fancy the fact that in twelve 
months ending June, 1887, no less than 483,- 
1 16 immigrants poured into six ports of the 
United States. 

Senator Hawley, of Connecticut, looks like 
an old officer in our army. He is an effect- 
ive orator and an able writer. 

I should like him better than I do if, dur- 
ing the last campaign, he had not said that 
the love of the common people for Mr. Blaine 
reminded him of the love of the common 
people for Christ. 

Senator Jones, of Nevada, has a silver elo- 
quence, which is said to be generally pre- 
pared for him by some literary menial. 

It is more common than is supposed for 
Senators and Representatives to have their 
speeches written for them. 

I have met several young men in Wash- 
ington who do this kind of work. 



2 2 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Speeches with classical quotations and 
intricate tariff statistics fetch the. highest 
figures. 

Senator Voorhees, of Indiana, whom they 
call the " Tall " something or other " of the 
Wabash," is grandiloquently vague. 

He would probably define a politician as 
I once heard Surrogate Calvin define one at 
a Tammany Hall meeting in New York : 

" A politician is one who has an exalted 
and appreciative idea of the beneficent feat- 
ures of the Government." 

This may mean something, and may not. 

On certain subjects — high tariff or low 
tariff, for instance — the average legislator 
here is as cautious in giving you an out-and- 
qut opinion — well, about as an actress is cau- 
tious in giving you her age. 

There are several orators who are members 
neither of the Senate nor of the House of 
Representatives, and who have great in- 
fluence. 

I have already spoken of Mr. Blaine and 
Mr. Depew. 

I wish to mention also Colonel Ingersoll. 

What a rhetorician is he ! 

What a keen wit in that white round head ! 



THE ORATORS. 23 

What a lot of humor, sarcasm, power, 
behind the red, flushed mask of that big fat 
face ! 

Ingersoll is a manufacturer of phrases and 
a destroyer of reHgions. 

He hates Democrats and God. 

Your poUtical orators here never let the 
storm and fury of their eloquence run away 
with the interest of their pockets. 

They have — most of them — five reasons 
for this caution — a wife and four children. 

They keep their eyes on King Mob, and 
study his humor. 

It is not pleasant to be elected to stay at 
home because you have been too frank. 

Senator Payne, of Ohio, got into the Sen- 
ate, not because he is rich in the honey of 
eloquence, but because he made his money 
in oil. 

Senator Leland Stanford, of California, has 
a money-bag. 

Who was so malicious as to say his mono- 
gram, 

£.S. 

suited him exactly ? 

Senators Hale and Frye, of Maine, are 
blatant partisans of Mr. Blaine. 



24 ffOS'. UNCLE SAM. 

Their speeches invariably smell of the ex- 
ploded cartridges of the late war, or of stale 
fish. 

Senator Don Cameron, of Pennsylvania, 
manly, red -headed, does not speak much. 
He occupies his seat because his father, Mr. 
Simon Cameron, occupied it before him. 

The " Cameron machine" is all-powerful 
in Pennsylvania. It governs the Legislature 
of the State. 

Senator Beck, of Kentucky, is a fine judge 
of horse-flesh. 

Most of the Senators are not great orators. 

They have been sent to the Senate because 
of their position at the bar ; because of their 
money ; because they were friends to certain 
powerful corporations ; because they had 
procured offices or favors for the legislators 
of their respective States. 

One sometimes hears a good story about 
these Senators, though. 

A bitter partisan newspaper man from 
Butler one day met Senator Kiernan in a 
rain-storm, and offered him his umbrella. 

"Thank you," curtly said the politician; " I 
am not accustomed to such courtesy from 
the press," 



THE ORATORS. 



25 



" But you surely will not refuse ! It is 
raining very hard," rejoined the newspaper 
man. 

" Yes. as hard," answered the politician," as 
abuse rains in your articles, though I don't 
mean to say, sir, they are watery ! " 

Most of the oratory in the Senate and the 
House is nowadays confined to the Com- 
mittee-room. 

A scholarly writer, Mr. Woodrow Wilson, 
in a book called " Congressional Govern- 
ment," has recently demonstrated how secret 
committee- work has usurped open parlia- 
mentary discussion in this country. 

M. De Tocqueville, in his " Democracy in 
America," said that the town - meeting was 
the nucleus of government in the United 
States. 

That is all changed now. 

The centres of government are bar-rooms 
and committee-rooms. 

Just glance over this little table : 

CITY. SALOONS. SALOONS TO 

POPULATION. 

Omaha 176 110426 

Kansas City 405 i to 309 

St. Louis 1 ,600 I to 312 

Chicago 3,760 1 to 213 



26 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

CITY. SALOONS. SALOONS TO 

POPULATION. 

Cleveland 1,540 i to 129 

Indianapolis 348 i to 288 

St. Paul 600 1 to 221 

San Francisco 2,799 i to 84 

Brooklyn 3,oo6 i to 296 

New York 9,i97 i to 138 

Philadelphia 5)959 i to 142 

Baltimore 2,655 ^ to 115 

From the Senate, let us pa$s over to the 
House of Representatives. 

There is more noise there, you notice, than 
in the Senate; the members are less decorous. 

They speak, chew, spit, smoke, cock their 
feet on their desks, lounge on the sofas, 
laugh, and shout. 

The Speaker, elected by the House every 
session, Mr. Carlisle, of Kentucky, raps on 
his desk with his gavel for order. 

He is as dignified a presiding officer as M. 
Brisson used to be. 

Congressmen are elected — i member for 
every 100.000 of the population in a State — 
for two years. 

Mr. Speaker Carlisle, tall, wiry, clean- 
shaven — a good head on broacj shoulders — 
represents the low-tariff views of the Demo- 
cratic party. 



THE ORATORS. 



27 



He is au fait in facts and statistics. His 
lines of policy as a public man have been as 
straight as the lines of a ledger or a day- 
book. 

Though somewhat severe of aspect, for- 
bidding in manner, Mr. Speaker Carlisle can 
unbend as well as the next man, and tell a 
yarn over a glass of the whisky of his native 
State. 

One of his stories runs in this wise : 

" A good old Kentucky Democrat, who has been wait- 
ing twenty-five years for a post-office, owns a fine dog, 
which is his constant companion. The other day the dog 
had been having a run in the sunshine, and was resting on 
the porch with his tongue hanging out. ' That's a boss 
dog,' said a traveling man, who had been selling the old 
man a bill of goods. 'You're right he is,' said the old 
man, proudly. ' What makes him stick out his tongue 
that way ?* 'Politics.' 'Politics! How?' 'Why, sir, 
that dog knows Cleveland is elected, and he knows I want 
a post-office, and he's got his tongue out already to begin 
licking the stamps !' " 

Mr. Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, 
though a Democrat, is a high-tariff man. He 
looks after the interests of pig-iron and 
home manufacture. 

Though, as a general thing, Democrats 



28 ^OX. CXCLE SAAf. 

are for free trade or a liberal tariff, such as 
come from protection districts fashion their 
principles according to their constituencies. 

The politicians of Uncle Sam look to votes 
first, and theories afterward. 

Viewed from profile. Mr. Randall has a 
prominent chin. 

He has something stern in his face, just as 
Sieves had. 

Mr. Randall is a matter-of-fact speaker. 
He is as full of statistics, as a politician on 
the night of an election is full of rum. 

He has the figures at his fingers' ends. 



Population 60.000,000 

Natives of Germany 1,966,742 

Natives of Ireland i .854,5 7 1 

Voting Population in United States 10,048.061 

United States Debt in iSSo $1,056,584,146 

Exports in iSSo 751,988,240 

Imports, iSSo 674.029,792 

Gold producevl in United States in 1885. . . 31,800,000 
Silver " " •* 1S85... 51,600,000 

Cotton '* 1S86... 6,550,215 bis. 

Tobacco " • • 1880.. 472.661.157 lbs. 

Distilled Liquors produced in the United 

States in iSSo, \'alued $49,063,663 

Malt Liquors produced in the United States 

in 18S0, A-alued ^01.058,355 

Expenditures for Education 103.949.528 



THE ORATORS. 29 

Mr. Randall, who affects a republican 
simplicity in his daily life, has all these fig- 
ures down as fine as you, my dear Count, 
who do not affect this simplicity, have the 
addresses of the prettiest women of Paris. 

Let me continue our observations of the 
House. 

Mr. Holman, of Indiana, is called the 
" Watch Dog of the Treasury," because he 
never opens his mouth but to speak for re- 
trenchment. 

He is as maniaque on the subject of econ- 
omy as M. Naquet is on the subject of di- 
vorce. 

Mr. Reed, of Maine, is one of the wits of 
the House. 

He is quick at repartee and ready in de- 
bate. 

He looks something like Rabelais — merry, 
round, and comfortable. 

Mr. Ignatius Donnelly is as fanciful in his 
spoken arguments as he is in his printed 
words. 

He is the man, as you may have heard, 
who tries to make people believe the plays 
ascribed to Shakespeare were written by 
Lord Bacon. 



30 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



Mr. Bourke Cochran, of New York, is fat, 
bright, and eloquent. 

Mr. John J. O'Neil, of Missouri, hardly 
ever rises to his feet in the House without 
patting- labor on the back. 

Mr. Tim Campbell, of New York, does all 
his talking in the lobbies, and talks with as 
little grammar as the majority of his dis- 
trict. 

" Why, gintlemin," he said on one occa- 
sion, " what's a little thing like the Consti- 
tootion between frinds ?" 

Mr. Springer, of Illinois, speaks with pleas- 
ing facility. 

Mr. Francis Spinola, from New York, is 
famous for his burlesque loftiness of style 
and the height and size of his collar. 

Mr. Ben. Le Fevre, of Ohio, puts on demo- 
cratic airs in his speeches, and talks a good 
deal of the people and their rights. 

Most of the western Congressmen, I should 
remark, differ from their eastern colleagues 
by a certain republican aggressiveness. They 
hate foreigners — except such as have votes 
— and believe in democracy. They never 
tire of speaking of " the effete monarchies 
of Europe " and lauding America. 



THE ORATORS. 



31 



" Our fellow-countryman is a model of a man quite 
fresh from Natur's mould," said Mr. Pogram. " He is 
a true-born child of this free hemisphere ; verdant as the 
the mountains of our country, bright and flowing as our 
mineral Licks ; unspiled by withering conventionalities 
as air our broad and boundless Perearers ! Rough he 
may be ; so air our Barrs. Wild he may be ; so air our 
Buffalers. But he is a child of Natur', and a child of 
Freedom, and his boastful answer to the despot and the 
tyrant is, that his bright home is in the Settin' Sun !" 

This style of oratory is quite as common 
in the West to-day as it was when thus cari- 
catured by Dickens some forty-odd years ago. 

I said that the people of this country were 
divided into two parties. There is a third 
party — that of Labor — now springing up, 
which promises to stir matters considerably 
before long. 

The head of this party of Labor in the last 
Presidential election was Mr. Benjamin F. 
Butler. 

In the last mayoralty election in New 
York the representative of the Labor party, 
Henry George, polled 69,000 votes. 

New problems will soon enter into politi- 
cal discussions here. The age of romance 
is over. The age of reality is begun. 

Mr. Benjamin F. Butler, after having been 



T,2 HON. UNCLE MM. 

a general during the war, became a Repre 
sentative in Congress. 

He was first a Democrat, then a RepubU 
can. last a Laborer. 

Tricky, able, plebeian, active, he has some 
hold on the rabble. 

Butler is a rich demagogue who travels ir 
parlor-cars, accompanied by a colored valet. 

Mr. Morrison, of Illinois, is as eloquent or 
tariff matters as he is on horse-races. 

Mr. Butterworth, of Ohio, has a mouth aj 
firm as a bull-dog's. 

Mr. McComas, of Maryland, has done 
some good speaking in the House, but his 
fame rests on the fact that he is the cham 
pion baby-kisser. 

You may not know that some of the poli 
ticians of Uncle Sam ingratiate themselves 
with the mothers, and therefore the fathers 
of their districts, by kissing their babies. 

Mr. McComas is one of this class. 

Mr. Ryan, of Kansas, can have his hair cul 
without taking his hat off. 

Mr. W. W. Phelps, of New Jersey, is a 
light-weight champion of Mr. Blaine. 

He wears bangs. 

Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, and Mr 



THE ORATORS. 33 

Frank Hurd, of Ohio, have the tariff ques- 
tion on the brain. Mr. Kelley and Mr. Mc- 
Kinley are the champion advocates of Protec- 
tion. Mr. Hurd is the partisan of Free Trade. 

Mr. Mills, of lexas, represents tariff reduc- 
tion. 

Sturdy in frame, self-reliant in manner, 
Mr. Mills generally tugs away at his bristly 
mustache as he speaks. 

As though impressed with the importance 
of his advocacy of the " Mills Bill," he 
dresses habitually in solemn black. 

Mr. Mills has a trood strontr voice and uses 
forcible gestures. 

He has a clever way of mixing dry fact 
and apt illustration. 

But Mr. Mills makes slow headway. 

Mr. Mills speaks slowly, grinds slowly. 

Mr. Long, of Massachusetts, is scholarly 
and polished in his speeches. 

I always feel like saying of him what the 
poet Rogers wrote of Lord Dudley : 

" Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it : 
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it." 

Mr. Collins, of Massachusetts, says com- 
monplaces with uncommon fire. 



34 



//().\: I'xcu: s.t.u. 



Mr. RancU^lpli TiK-kcr. oi X'iiLiuiia. courtl) . 
ditjnitiod. a scholar ami a jurist o( the old 
school, is. for these vcr) reasons, an orator 
who appeals to the few . 

Mr. Tucker belon^^s to one oi tlie tirst fanv 
ilies of X'iroinia. 

These families, as you may not know, 
consider themselves very ancient, are con- 
sequently very proud, and are orenerally very 
poor. 

1 w ant to mention just two orators more. 

The wits of the Mouse for a'Jony; time were 
Mr. Samuel S. C\'>x. o{ New York, and Mr. 
Proctor Knoll. o\ Kentuck\-. Both oi these 
men are fond ot whiskv. and are excellent 
•iit'Ofi/turs. 

Loiter iii the corridors of \Villard"s Hotel, 
the orcai rendezvous ot politicians in Wash- 
inoton. and n on cannot fail to meet and 
hear them. 

The\- like to speak oi the public men oi 
the past, and tell some short and pertinent 
anecdote of ihem. 

1 heard Mr. L'ox tell the following' : 



" At a dinner given by a certain Senator. President 
Gartield turned to Keilev and said : 'Judge, how do you 



'JJ/E OR A TOA'S. 



35 



account for the success you have attained in public life ?' 
With great solemnity and impressiveness, Kelley answered: 
* Gentlemen, I owe me present position in the eyes of me 
country to the favor of Providence and me magnificent 
voice.' " 

And I heard Mr. Proctor Knott, in his 
quiet way, relate the following : 

" It was about the election time in South Carolina, and 
Wade Hampton was running for Governor. One morning, 
riding on the high-road, he met an old nigger with a bas- 
ket in his hand. ' What have you in your basket there, 
Sam ?' asked Hampton. 

" ' Ah, Massa Hampton, teese two fine Republican pup- 
pies.' 

" The General looked at them and rode on. 

" A few weeks after the election had taken place 
and Hampton was declared Governor of South Caro- 
lina, he rode along the same highway and met the .same 
darkey. 

" ' What have you got this morning in your basket there ?' 
asked the successful candidate. 

*" Ah, Massa Hampton,' replied Sam, doffing his cap 
and grinning, 'teese two fine Democratic puppies.' 

" The Governor looked at the beasts for a moment, and 
then said, 'Why, you black rascal, these are the selfsame 
puppies you showed me a week ago! You said they were 
Republican pupjiies then ; now you say they are Demo- 
cratic puppies.' 

"'Ah, beg pardfjn, Massa Hampton,' j>romptly rcjjlied 
Sam, 'they didn't hab their eyes open den yet !' 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



Enough of this, 

I will now leave you for a while and drive 
over to Chamberlain's for terrapin and white 
wine. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE LADIES. 

" All men are created equal," says Uncle 
Sam in the Declaration of Independence. 

The phrase is humbug. 

There is no equality here, and there never 
was. 

" All men are created equal." 

No, nor the women either. 

You have but to spend one season in 
Washington to discover the truth of this. 

The head of fashionable life in the capital 
is, of course, Mrs. President Cleveland. 

They call her the "First Lady in the 
Land." 

She has a pretty, winsome face, rich cnest- 
nut hair, a fair complexion, an elegant and 
youthful form. 

She is tall, graceful, easy in her move- 
ments. 

Mrs. Cleveland had always lived in seclu- 

37 



38 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

sion prior to her doming to Washington, had 
not even been sent to finish her education in 
those centres of culture, New York and Bos- 
ton. 

But Mrs. Cleveland does very well. 

She receives with equal affability the dip- 
lomat from abroad and the rustic from the 
backwoods. 

The nieces of Uncle Sam have the wdnder- 
ful gift of adapting themselves readily to all 
circumstances. 

Mrs. Cleveland has, to my knowledge, but 
one fault. 

She persists in playing on the piano. 

Some will maliciously say that she com- 
mitted a second fault when she married the 
President about a year ago. 

It is true he had been her father's trusted 
friend and her own guardian, but — the Presi- 
dent is fifty, and fat, and not fair. 

Let us not meddle in other people's busi- 
ness, however ; let us not imitate those 
newspaper correspondents who, by special 
train, followed the President and Mrs. Cleve- 
land on their wedding trip, spied upon their 
doings, and reported them at length in two- 
column articles. 



TFIE LADIES. 



39 



The ladies of the members of the Cabinet 
are Mrs. Cleveland's assistants at all public 
receptions and affairs of state. 

Mr. Secretary of State Bayard is a widow- 
er, but his family is represented at receptions 
by his daughter. 

Miss Bayard is an excellent horsewoman. 

Big with his own importance and that of 
his ancestors, Mr. Secretary Endicott, who 
was a judge before he entered the Cabinet, 
is crusty and reserved, and Mrs. Endicott 
follows his example. 

Mr. Augustus H. Garland is the Attorney- 
General. He is a bachelor, and lives with his 
mother, to whom he is greatly attached. Mr. 
Garland affects, or has, a genuine republican 
simplicity of — I was almost going to say 
dress. He never wears a swallow-tail coat, 
and shuns the receptions at the White 
House. 

The Cabinet of the President consists of 
seven officers. They are appointed by the 
President; are his private advisers; responsi- 
ble to him and not to Congress for the con- 
duct of their respective departments. 

They are not Ministers in the sense of the 
term common in France and England. They 



40 !fOX. rXCLE ^AM. 

ha\c no scat in the Ico^islativc body. They 
never speak there. They have no poHey of 
their own. 

Members of the Cabinet send formal re- 
ports of their departments to the President 
once a vear. and the President forwards 
these reports to Congress with his own an- 
nual message. 

The President holds a Cabinet meeting 
once or twice a week during the sessions of 
Congress. He holds the meeting in a large, 
commodious room, around a long green 
table, in the White House. 

Mr. Secretary of the Treasury T^airchild is 
the well-dressed son of a ricii man. 

Mr. Tilden first pushed him into politics. 

Mrs. Fairchild. a handsome woman, is 
fond oi society, and society reciprocates the 
attachment. 

Mr. Secretary Vilas is an eloquent man. 

Mrs. Vilas is an unassuming lady. 

Mr. Secretary of the Navy Whitney is the 
richest member of the Cabinet. 

He was an ambitious, able young lawyer 
in New Vork when he married Miss Payne, 
of Ohio, a daughter of the wealthy oil man. 
The Whitnevs live in what is here called 



'I /IE LA DIES. 



4' 



grand style. They have a home in Washing- 
ton, a residence that cost over half a million 
in New York, and a country-place in Lenox, 
Massachusetts. 

Mrs. Whitney is very fond of music. 

Secretary of the Navy Whitney represents 
in the Cabinet the aristocracy of money. 

Secretary of War Endicott represents the 
aristocracy of birth. 

" All men are created equal." 

Humbug, my friend, humbug ! 

You see, about two hundred and fifty 
years ago, a lot of emigrants from England 
called Puritans came to this country in a 
ship called the Mayflower". They were as 
disagreeable a lot as ever lived, and would 
not let others live. They wanted liberty for 
themselves, but denied it to others. They 
went to church three times a day. They 
prosecuted those who did not believe as they 
did. They burnt witches. They forbade 
drinking. They hated new fashions. They 
sang wheezy hymns. They read prosy books. 
They mixed in their neighbors' affairs. They 
ate abominable food. 

Yet these same Puritans form the source of 
an aristocracy on the domain of Uncle Sam! 



42 IJON. UNCLE SAM. 

Members of the Cabinet constitute the 
private advisers of the President. 

They are not public Ministers, as with us. 

They have no seat or voice in the parHa- 
ment. 

Members of the Cabinet receive $8,000 a 
year each for their services. 

Looking- over what I have written, I find I 
have wandered somewhat from my subject. 

I am, in one respect at least, like Montaigne. 

I start out by speaking of stage-coaches, 
and end by treating of Caesar and Alexander 
the Great. 

I was saying, then, that in this Republic 
of Uncle Sam the doctrine of political and 
social equality was a pleasant fiction. 

The novelists prove it, and if further proof 
were necessary, observation would confirm 
the novelists. 

Society moves in circles in Washington. 

Mrs. President Cleveland and the ladies 
of the Cabinet form the first circle. 

Mrs. Justice Stanley Matthews, Mrs. Jus- 
tice Field, Mrs. Justice Lamar, compose the 
leaders of the Supreme Court circle. 

Then comes the Senate coterie, 

Mrs. Sherman, Mrs. Ingalls, Mrs. Palmer, 



THE LADIES. 



43 



Mrs. Stanford, Mrs. Logan, Mrs. Don Cam- 
eron, Mrs. Hawley, give the law here.. 

Next comes the army circle — an aristocratic 
circle. 

Mrs. General Sheridan, aided by Mrs. Ad- 
jutant-General Drum, is the moving power 
in this set. 

And last comes, the House of Representa- 
tives circle. 

Here Mrs. Speaker Carlisle presides. 

These circles are controlled by rules of 
etiquette quite as rigid as those in the Fau- 
bourg St. Germain. 

The ladies ape our system of calling. 

They mimic our methods of leaving cards. 

The Senators' wives consider themselves 
better than the Congressmen's wives. 

The Justices' wives consider themselves 
better than the Senators' wives. 

They all look down upon the women 
clerks employed in the departments. 

They all look up to the foreign representa- 
tives in Washington. 

The foremost position among the diplo- 
mats is occupied by the Hon. Sir L. S. Sack- 
ville West, Envoy Extraordinary and Minis- 
ter Plenipotentiary of Her Britannic Majesty. 



44 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



When his name is bawled out by a valet 
at a reception, there is a respectful mur- 
mur. 

I am inclined to think Uncle Sam dearly 
loves a lord — when he comes from England. 

The presence at receptions of the Hon. 
Henry Edwards, Secretary of the British 
Legation, of Captain Henry Kane, Naval 
Attache, of Horace Helyar, Esq., Second 
Secretary, is sufficient to make the recep- 
tions a success. 

I am mistaken. Pardon ! I forgot to men- 
tion Mrs. Horace Helyar. 

She is one of the most beautiful and re- 
fined ladies at the capital. 

M. Theodore Roustan, the Minister of the 
French Republic, does not occupy as high a 
position in Washington as does Sir L. Sack- 
ville West, the Minister of Great Britain. 

Is it because he has no title ? Is it because 
he is a republican ? 

In spite of speeches and toasts at the in- 
auguration of the Bartholdi statue, the Unit- 
ed States does not admire or sympathize 
with France. 

Uncle Sam. when his protege, Erin, is not 
around, is rather fond of John Bull. 



THE LADIES. 



45 



Baron de Struvc, the Minister from Russia, 
is popular in society. 

The Americans rather Hke the Russians. 

The Government of Uncle Sam remembers 
the friendly attitude maintained toward it 
by the Government of the Czar during the 
Civil War. 

Count Arco, of Germany, Senor Romero, 
of Mexico, Count Lippe - Weissenfeld, of 
Austria, Baron Fava, of Italy, Senor Don 
Muruaga, of Spain, add brilliancy to the 
receptions at the White House by their uni- 
forms and decorations. 

The smaller the country, the larger the 
decorations, the more brilliant the uniforms. 

The ladies do not generally care as much 
for the Ministers as they do for the attaches. 

To dance with Count Sala, of France, with 
Senor Don Miguel de Flores Garcia, of Spain, 
with Baron Paumgartten, of Austria, with 
Count Gaston d'Arschot, of Belgium, with 
Count Albert de Foresta, of Italy, with 
Baron von Zedtwitz, of Germany, is an honor 
that any girl will remember all her life. 

Especially popular and sociable here is 
Mr. Alexandre Greger, of the Russian Lega- 
tion. He has done much to make life in the 



46 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

" City of Magnificent Distances " more en- 
durable. 

These foreigners, as a general rule, bore 
themselves to death at the capital. 

In order to make time pass, they go to 
parties, balls, receptions, theatres. 

Theatres remind me. 

Dr. Kane, of Baltimore, tells a story about 
the actor Edwin Forrest and Abraham Lin- 
coln, the relation here between politics and 
the stage. 

" One night during the war, Forrest was in Washington. 
The play was ' RicheHeu.' President Lincohi, accompa- 
nied byForney, Seward, and several prominent members 
of the Administration, was seated in a private box at the 
left of the stage. In political opinions Forrest was directly 
opposed to them. When the grand apostrophe to the pen 
occurred Mr. Forrest rose, solemnly and deliberately 
facing the President's box. With pen held majestically 
aloft, his eyes flashing fire, the tones of that wonderful 
voice vibrating through the theatre, and speaking with 
unusual deliberation and emphasis, he gave such a render- 
ing of Bulwer's lines as must have astonished the Presi- 
dent 

" ' Beneath the rule of men entirely great 

The pen is mightier than the sword. 

Take away the sword ! 

States can be saved without it. ' 

" He looked the whole party squarely in the face, as 
much as to say, ' And that's my personal opinion, too.' 



THE LADIES. 



47 



The shot hit its mark. There ensued some whispered 
remarks between Forney and Lincoln, and a deprecatory 
shake of the head on the part of the latter, accompanied 
by dubious elevation of the eyebrows, as much as to say, 
' Well, I never heard that passage read that way before.' " 

Mr. President Garfield used to say that 
the only real coats-of-arms in this country 
were shirt-sleeves. 

The phrase is pretty, but, like most epi- 
grams, it isn't true. 

Hon. Uncle Sam is perfectly delighted to 
hob-nob with a lord of genuine pedigree, or 
a lady of high descent. 

Novelists, preachers, and newspaper men 
never weary of upbraiding their republican 
country-women for their love of titled for- 
eigners. 

I remember not long ago reading in Toivn 
Topics, a society paper of New York, brill- 
iantly edited by Mr. Alfred Trumble, a list 
of nieces of Uncle Sam who have mated 
abroad. 

Miss Jerome, of New York, married Lord 
Randolph Churchill, and one of her sisters 
married Sir John Leslie, Baronet. Miss Con- 
suelo Yznaga married Viscount Mandeville, 
and Sir John Lister Kaye married Lady Man- 



48 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

deville's sister. Miss Stephens married Lord 
Alfred Paget. Lady Anglesey, Lady Ver- 
non, Lady Abinger, Lady Hesketh, Mrs. 
Ernest Chaplin, Mrs. L'Estrange, of Hun- 
stanton, the Hon. Mrs. Plunkett, Lady 
Kartwright, the Hon. Mrs. Carington, Mrs. 
Edward Balfour, the Hon. Mrs. OHver North- 
cote, Mrs. Baring, Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck, 
Jr., Mrs. Beresford Hope, Lady A. Butler, 
and the Duchess of Marlborough, are Amer- 
icans by birth. 

I make no mention of alliances between 
the daughters of oil men, coal men, fur men, 
whisky men, tobacco men, cotton men, with 
the dukes of Belgium, the viscounts and 
counts of France, the marquises and princes 
of Italy, the grandees of Spain, and the well- 
born and impecunious barons of Germany. 

I am not compiling an " Almanach de 
Gotha." 

I simply endeavor to give an idea of the 
tendencies of what the papers call the high- 
est society of Uncle Sam. 

Democracy, while it is supposed to have 
the effect of leveling the classes, in reality 
first vulgarizes and then divides them. 

The very platitude, the very unpictur- 



THE LADIES. 



49 



esqueness, of everything in this repubHc of 
Uncle Sam, forces those with leisure and 
money to manufacture variety, to set up arti- 
ficial distinctions, to imitate foreign models. 

Those who are not captivated by exotic 
nobility pay the homage of admiration to 
Vanderbilt and Gould, Mackey and Crocker. 

Politics is a favorite topic of conversation 
in all circles of society. 

Politics in America do not estrange and 
separate families, as they do in France. 

You meet people of all political complex- 
ions at a reception of the President. 

The politicians fight during a campaign, 
but when the vote is cast, they clasp hands. 

They forgive and forget. 

The politicians of Uncle Sam, whatever 
else may be said of them, are not petty. 

They do not, as with us, change the names 
of streets and the heads on postage-stamps, 
with every change of administration. 

Soi_ie of the old politicians of Uncle Sam are 
very amusing in a parlor. They will speak 
as though they were on the hustings. 

I have been told an interesting example. 

During the Grant-Greeley campaign some 
one ventured to remark, at an evening party, 



50 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



that anything ought to be done to beat 
Grant. 

Without regard to the ladies and gentle- 
men of different opinions present, Colonel 
Mason drew himself up and shouted : 

" Beat Grant ! Build a worm fence round 
a winter supply of summer weather, catch 
thunderbolts in a bladder, break a hurricane 
to harness, hang out the ocean on a grape- 
vine to dry, but never, never expect to beat 
Grant ! " 

I alluded to the love which girls in this 
country have for titled personages. 

I knew of one girl, however, who was not 
to be taken by the tinsel. 

Her name was Dora Dion. 

She was an actress at the time. 

Afterward she married a wealthy gentle- 
man of Newport. 

"No, I do not like this country at all," 
languidly remarked a noble attache of the 
Austrian Legation to her one evening ; " and 
what execrably bad French you all speak 
here in Washington ! " 

' Ah, Monsieur le Comte, you see," re- 
plied Dora Dion, quickly, " we have not, 
like you, had the advantage of having 



THE LADIES. 



51 



the French twice in our capital to give us 
lessons." 

But this is an aside. 

It proves little, nothing. 

Most of the so-called society here Is unre- 
publican. 

Do not think I exaggerate. 

To find out that society and politics in the 
United States are substantially as I sketch 
them, you have only to read the novelists. 

Read " Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Mrs. 
Stowe, and " A Fool's Errand," by Tourgee. 

Procure that wicked little book, " Sub 
Rosa," by Murray — a sketch on the Washing- 
ton of the days of Mr. President Arthur. 

Read " Through One Administration," by 
Mrs. Burnett, and "Democracy," by Mrs. 
Adams. 

Read the " Breadwinners," by Mason, and 
the " Moneymakers." by Keenan. 

There you will see pictures of the aristoc- 
racy, plutocracy, of Uncle Sam. 

Hail a cab, drive to the theatre, buy a 
ticket, and witness some of their plays that 
have political tendencies. 

They are not great plays, like those of 
Sardou or Dumas — we should call them 



52 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



charges — but they will do to give you an idea 
of the types and opinions and words of the 
politicians of Uncle Sam. 

There is Frank Mayo as Davy Crockett 
in the play of that name by Murdock. 

There is J. T. Raymond as Colonel Mul- 
berry Sellers in the " Gilded Age, " by Mark 
Twain. 

Sellers, as you don't remember, is the poli- 
tician who goes in " for the old flag — and an 
appropriation ! " 

There is J. T. Raymond, again, in " For 
Congress," a satire in five acts by David D. 
Lloyd. 

The relations of the stage and politics are 
not as intimate here as with us. 

But the politicians of Uncle Sam are not 
sensitive about allusions to themselves on 
the stage. 

They do not imitate Sir Robert Walpole, 
who went behind the scenes one night and 
caned an actor who, in " The Beggar's Op- 
era," alluded satirically to one of his pet po- 
litical schemes. 

President Cleveland, I hear, laughed 
heartily when told that they parodied his 
Western trip at Dockstader's. 



THE LADIES. 



53 



Mr. Blaine, at the Casino, in New York, 
about a year ago applauded as much as any 
one Francis Wilson's hits at him in a topical 
song. 

Mr. Butler shook with merriment when, 
during the run of Rice's " Evangeline," he 
saw himself burlesqued on the boards. 

Judge Thurman, when they introduced 
his personality in Strauss's " Night in Ven- 
ice," smiled and said : " We politicians are 
public property. These fellows are only 
doing for us what Aristophanes did for the 
politicians of Athens over two thousand 
years ago." 

I spoke of Dockstader. 

Permit me to give an instance of quick 
repartee by that minstrel. 

Warbling a ditty one night on the stage, 
about Canada being the Mecca to which the 
political defaulters of Uncle Sam escape, he 
was somewhat surprised to hear some hisses 
mingled with the applause. 

Turning around quickly, he looked stead- 
ily in the direction whence came ^he hissing, 
and remarked: 

" I was not aware that there were any 
boodlers in the house, but if I have hurt the 



54 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



feelings of any one by that song I am sorry 
for them." 

If you ever come to New York, you must not 
fail to go to Harrigan's. At that theatre you 
can see the different types of local and na- 
tional politicians most pungently caricatured. 

And then there is William J. Florence 
as the Hon. Bar dwell Slole, in " The Mighty 
Dollar," a popular play by Woolft. 

And " The Crucible," by Oakey Hall, for- 
merly Mayor of New York, now the witty 
correspondent of the New York Herald, 
from London. 

What do we see in all these plays ? 

We see scheming, selfish, money-seeking, 
pompous, flatulent politicians. There may 
be exaggeration, there may be caricature, in 
these portraitures ; but there are also many 
striking resemblances. 

We meet characters in these plays whom 
we may come across at any reception in 
Washington — Senators, Congressmen, office- 
seekers, judges, claimants, patent and pen- 
sion agents, railroad lawyers. 

We meet lobbyists who receive $15,000 a 
year for their services in engineering bills 
and claims through Congress. 



THE LADIES. 



55 



We meet interesting orphans and sympa- 
thetic widows who have been placed as 
clerks in the departments at $900 a year, or 
$1,200, by the influence of some friendly 
legislator anxious for his own, their, and 
his country's good. 

But why speak of this any further ? 

I know you are not over-fond of politics 
just now. 

I can readily imagine you humming with 
Beranger : 

" Oh, mistress mine, on whom I dote, 
Though you complain 'tis hard 
That to my country still I give 
Too much of my regard ! 
If politics — nay, even to lash 
Abuses — be a bore. 
Be reassured, sweet mistress mine, 
I'll talk of them no more !" 



CHAPTER III. 

THE RHYMESTERS. 

" Our statesman true and grand ! 
We clasp once more the hand 
Of freedom's chief — The noble man of Maine ! 
All hail ! all hail ! the chief !" 

Men who write and sing political rhymes 
have always played an important part in the 
domain of Uncle Sam. 

Rhymes please the ears of the masses, and 
are easily retained by untrained memories. 

It is sound, rather than sound sense, which 
takes the crowd. 

The land where there is little reason in 
politics, is the land where there is much pol- 
itics in rhyme. 

" Pardon me, Mesdemoiselles," said M. 
Paul Albert, addressing a class of fashion- 
able young ladies on history one afternoon — 
" pardon me for the few historical facts I 
am compelled to give you !" 

S6 



THE RHYMESTERS. 



57 



I make the same apology, blow the dust 
from the exceedingly dry and unpicturesque 
history of this land of pork and plutocrats, 
and proceed to dazzle you with my newly 
acquired information. 

Philip Freneau, a journalist, ship-captain, 
magazine - writer, government clerk, seems 
to have been one of the most effective 
rhymesters of the American Revolution. 
He was a cross between a libeler of the 
Fronde in France and a ballad writer of the 
time of the Great Rebellion in England. 
There is never the grace, the elegance, the 
wit, of some of our political chansonniers 
about this fellow. He strikes as hard as a 
clergyman, when excited, thumps his pulpit 
desk. He is interesting, however, and he 
never minces matters. 

One of his squibs runs after this wise : 

" When a certain great King, whose initial is G, 
Forces stamps upon paper, and folks to drink tea, 
When these folks burn his paper, like stubble. 
You may guess that this King is coming to trouble." 

Rivington, editor of the Gazette, was one 
of the men whom Freneau hated. He told 
him many unvarnished truths. 



5 8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

" You must know as well as I, 
Your first great object is to lie." 

His hatred of Rivingtoii was only exceed- 
ed by his hatred of Great Britain. He prayed, 
in 1775. that God may deHver us — 

" From the Caitiff, Lord North, who would bind us in 

chains, 
From our noble King Log, with his tooth-full of brains, 
Who dreams, and is certain [while taking a nap] 
He has conquered our lands as they lay on his map. 
From a kingdom that bullies, hectors, and swears, 
I send up to heaven my wishes and prayers, 
That we, disunited, may freemen be still, and Britain go 

on — to be damned, if she will." 

During the administration of Washington, 
when, as you know, there was some danger 
of a rupture with France, the epigramma- 
tists and rhymesters flooded the papers with 
their squibs, their skits, and theiv couplets. 
One of the best of these ephemeral produc- 
tions is the epigram on William Smith, who 
moved ten resolutions for defense, and after- 
ward added two more. 

" Twelve motions Smith in one day made, 
Yet the mountain brought forth but a mouse. 
The next motion he makes, let us pray, 
He may move himself out of the House." 



THE RHYMESTERS. 



59 



In the political contests which ensued be- 
tween Federalists and Republicans, between 
Democrats and Whigs, between Republicans 
and Democrats, the jingle of the political 
rhymesters was most distinctly audible and 
markedly influential. 

Robert Treat Paine, whose political song, 
" Adams and Liberty," contains such excru- 
ciating lines as — 

" For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, 
While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls a wave," 

— this man headed the list of political cam- 
paign rhymesters. 

This is a select and dreaded body of 
v'ersifiers, who every four years vie 
with the prose writers and stump speakers 
of Uncle Sam in making a great hulla- 
baloo. 

They publish fulsome encomiums on their 
own candidates. They lie about the candi- 
dates of the other side. 

We would wonder how " My Country, 'tis 
of Thee," by Smith, ever conquered the place 
it holds, if we did not know what rubbish 
are the words of even the " Marseillaise," by 
Rouget de Lisle. 



6o HON. UNCLE SAM. 

" Let music swell the breeze, 
And ring among the trees 
Sweet freedom's song ! 
Let mortal tongues awake, 
Let all that breathe partake, 
Let rocks their silence break. 
The sound prolong !" 

The crowd does not care for the words of 
rhymes and songs ; in fact, it hardly ever 
knows more than one stanza and half a 
chorus ; but the crowd cares a great deal for 
the tune. 

The patriots who during the war had sung 
themselves hoarse with " Yankee Doodle," 
trolled the " Battle of the Keys " of Francis 
Hopkinson, later shouted in the " Hail Col- 
umbia" of Joseph Hopkinson, and, still later, 
were fired to enthusiasm by the " Star 
Spangled Banner" of Francis Key. 

This political song, I should remark, was 
first written on the back of an old letter in 
1 8 14. while the author watched the bombard- 
ment by the British of Fort McHenry, near 
Baltimore. 

" On that shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, 
Where the foe's haughty host in silence reposes, 
What is it that the breeze o'er the towering steep. 
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses ? 



THE RHYMESTERS. 6l 

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, 
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream, 
'Tis the Star Spangled Banner, oh long may it wave, 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave !" 

Pretty, is it not, and patriotic ? 

Oh, get these gentlemen well aroused, and 
they will do ! 

Now the rhymester of the Democrats sings 
such lines as these : 

" We are Cleveland standard-bearers, marching with the 

mighty throng ; 
You can see our colors waving, you can hear our battle 

song. 
From the hill-tops and the valleys they are gathering in 

their might 
For Cleveland and for Thurman, and for justice, truth, 

and right. 
We stand upon a platform without a plank that's loose, 
And we will show these pigtail candidates just how to 

cook a goose. 

"We will shake the red bandanna till the rats run in their 
holes ; 
Grandfather's name can't save them when we rally at the 
polls. 

*' Their loud talk on the tariff and of ' free trade ' is too 
thin ; 
The people now are finding out ju^t where the laugh 
comes in ; 



62 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Monopolists and millionaires of course will loudly bawl, 

But they cannot fool the workingmen, who'll get right 
there this fall. 

The frauds they've played in years gone by we're watch- 
ing for again ; 

Their party lies are getting stale; their object is too plain." 

And the champion of the Republicans 
gives vent to his feehngs thus : 

'* Protection forever ! ring out your loyal cry, 
Pull down the red bandanna, raise the Stars and the 

/Stripes on high ; 
With Harrison and Morton we will make free trade fly. 
Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 



/d 



Free trade has proved the country's bane whenever it 
was tried — 
Our industries were crying for ' Protection '; 
isaster followed in its wake, with ruin far and wide. 
Till every one called loudly for ' Protection.' 



' Good wages paid for honest work ' is written on our 
flag. 

Such is the spirit of Protection ; 
And every banner lacking this is but a worthless rag. 

Affording not a single soul 'Protection.' 

• We believe in giving every man a chance to earn his 
bread, 
Shouting the battle cry, * Protection.' 
No matter how he labors, with his hands or with his head, 
Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 



THE RHYMESTERS. 



63 



"We extend to all deserving ones a welcome to our land, 
Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 
They help us much in building up a nation truly grand, 
Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 

" They raise on high the good old flag, and haste to join 
our band. 
Shouting the battle cry, ' Protection.' 
And soon the glorious cause will spread throughout this 
favored land. 
And every one will raise the shout. ' Protection.' " 

Though the Americans were not and are 
not, Hke the French, a *' peuple chansonnier," 
a song -loving people, though they do not, 
hke the old partisans of the Fronde, when 
meeting in the street, ask in rhyme — 

" Etes vous du parti, 
Mon ami, 
Du Conde, Longueville, et Conti ? " 

The nephews of Uncle Sam have always 
had a fancy for such stuff as this : 

•' Adams, the Great, 
In envied state. 
Issued a Proclamation 
That each free State 
Abstain from meat 
With deep humiliation, 



64 IION. UNCLE SAM. 

Let 'Ristocrats, 

Those scurvy brats, 

Keep fast with fear and mourning." 

But most of the campaign rhymes produc- 
ed here have the merit of brevity. The bal- 
lad writers of Uncle Sam produce their verse 
somewhat as the pedant Porson said Charles 
James Fox produced his sentences : they 
throw themselves into the middle of it, and 
trust to God Almighty to get them out 
again. 

One of the most popular and absurd of the 
political rhymes ever written in any land 
outside of Zanzibar was the campaign ditty 
" Tippecanoe, and Tyler too," concocted by 
Ross to help a nobody into the White House 
in Washington. I read this jingle only the 
other day in the Congressional Library — a 
building, by-the-way, where the cuspidores 
are ranged in better order than the books. 

" Oh, what is causing this great commotion, motion, 

motion, our country through ? 
It is the ball that's rolling on for Tippecanoe, and Tyler 

too ! 
For Tippecanoe, and Tyler too. 
And with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van, 
Van, oh he's a used-up man ! " 



THE RHYMESTERS. 



65 



It was at that time, in 1840, that Tuplett, 
of Kentucky, had the audacity to quote such 
a campaign catch as this in the House of 
Representatives. 

" No Prices or Swartwouts, or such deceivers, 
Shall be appointed cash receivers, 
And no man who is given to grabbin'. 
Shall ever enter this log-cabin." 

Such lines caught the popular taste. 

The herds who gather in public halls at 
campaign time, full of enthusiasm and 
whisky, do not mind the nonsense of the 
lines they bellow. They rather shout : 

" Yankee Doodle, keep it up, 
Yankee Doodle dandy, 
Mind the music and the step 
And with the girls be handy." 

The rhymesters do not generally mind the 
advice contained in the third line of this 
stanza. They meet the requirements of the 
fourth, however. I have observed them at 
balls and parties. The politicians of Uncle 
Sam, be they poets, pamphleteers, orators, 
diplomats, or journalists, soon adapt them- 
selves to circumstances. 
5 



66 IfOX. UNCLE SAM. 

The Civil War. the fiijht between the North 
and South about union and slavery, from 
1 86 1 to 1865, of course produced battahons 
of rhymers. Most of their work is below 
notice. The Government of the United 
States offered a prize of $500 for the best 
verses on the struggle, a national hymn, and 
though eleven hundred and fifty patriotic 
poems were sent in, none was adjudged 
worthy of the laurel. They had songs like 
" John Brown," and " Battle-cry of Freedom," 
and '• Hang Jeff Davis." lots of war hymns, 
battle songs, but there was no great nation- 
al rhyme. 

No. my dear Uncle Sam. you cannot manu- 
facture a great poem as you do a patent 
wash-wringer. 

I single out the verses of Richard H. 
Newell, who wrote under the pseudonym 
" Orpheus C. Kerr." as the one representative 
rhymer of rebellion days. 

He wasn't great, but he was original. 

His ballads in dialect, with odd humor 
in every line, with wit. sarcasm, banter, in 
almost every stanza, are thoroughly represen- 
tative. 

Read to-dav. thev tire us a little. 



THE RHYMESTERS. 



67 



Read in the midst of the fray, they must 
have been very effective. 

In his " Carol of the Confederate Beggar " 
he ridicules the depreciation of Southern 
currency and the loftiness of Southern pride. 

" Though but fifty thousand dollars 
Be the sum of all I own, 
Yet I'm merry with my begging 
And I'm happy with a bone ; 

" Nor with any brother beggar 
Does my heart refuse to share, 
Though a thousand dollars only, 
Be the most I have to spare. 

" I am shabby in my seven 
Hundred dollar hat of straw, 
And my dinner's but eleven 
Hundred dollars in the raw ; 
Yet I hold my head the higher, 
That it owes the hatter least, 
And my scanty crumbs are sweeter, 
Than the viands of a feast." 

Above I spoke of the rejected national 
rhymes. One of Newell's best letters, dated 
Washington, August, 1861, was written on 
this very subject. He gives specimens of 
some supposed hymns sent in to the Com- 



<'A 



68 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

mittee, and parodies the style of some well- 
known authors. 

It is extremely difficult to choose from 
among Newell's many rhymes. 

I select the poem he calls " Repudiation," 
published at the beginning of the war. 

" 'Neath a ragged Palmetto a Southerner sat, 
A-twisting the band of his Panama hat, 
And trying to lighten his mind of a load 
By humming the words of the following ode : 
' Oh for a nigger, and oh for a whip ! 
Oh for a cocktail, and oh for a nip ! 
Oh for a shot at old Greeley and Beecher ! 
Oh for a crack at a Yankee school-teacher ! 
Oh for a captain, and oh for a ship ! 
Oh, for a cargo of niggers each trip ! ' 
And so kept oh-ing for all he had not, 
Not contented with owing for all that he had got." 

1 am not surprised to hear that when a 
new ballad by Newell appeared in its day, 
President Lincoln, with his feet up, read the 
rhyme to his Cabinet officers seated around 
the table. 

Of late years political rhymers have ap- 
peared on the stage of the different theatres 
throughout the Union. They do for politi- 
cians here almost as much as Paulus did for 
General Boulanger in Paris. 



J 



THE RHYMESTERS. 69 

Popular comedians, like Edward Harrigan, 
Nat Goodwin, Digby Bell, Lew Dockstader, 
De Wolf Hopper,Tony Pastor, Jimmy Powers, 
Henry Dixey, Francis Wilson, have, while 
playing operette, or local farce, or burlesque, 
introduced " topical songs," which allude 
to passing political events in a humorous, 
sarcastic strain. 

The " topical song " is immensely popular. 

Hewitt, author of " It's English, you 
know," satirizing the Anglomaniacs, made a 
fortune for Dixey. 

The comedian who has a good topical song 
at his tongue's end is sure of his encores. 

Harrigan sings these verses descriptive of 
a local politician : 

" In a quiet little room. 

At the back of a saloon 
That stands at the top of Cherry Hill, 

Where men from tinemints 

Hould lengthy argymints 
On everything beside th' liquor bill ; 

The owner of the place 

Has a Connemara face, 
A leader — d'ye hear me ? — thro' and thro'; 

When he comes in the dure 

We all bow t' th' flu re 
With 'Old Boss ]-5arry, how d'ye do ?' 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



Then it's * Old Boss Barry, how d'ye do ; 
Is there anything that we can do for you ? 

Come, tell us of your plan, 

We're wid you to a man, 
For Old Boss Barry hip hurroo ! ' 

" He's a dude in the ward. 
And he's perfectly adored 

By those to the front and in th' rear; 
And to his constituents 
He speaks wid eloquence 

So flowingly beside a keg o' beer. 
For county an' th' State, 
He's th' maker of the slate. 

A leader — d'ye hear me ? — thro' and thro'; 
Sure th' rank an' th' file 
They greet him all the while 

With ' Old Boss Barry, how d'ye do ? ' 

" He'll have his men in line, 

'Round about election time — 
Yes, all from the top of Cherry Hill. 

Sure he could colonize 

And really paralyze 
The party that would vote agin his will; 

No office would he take. 

Just let him take a rake 
Of boodle — d'ye hear me ? — thro' and thro' 

Sure he's in and never out. 

That's why the people shout, 
Old Boss Barry, how d'ye do?' " 



I 



THE RHYMESTERS. 7 1 

One of the wittiest, cleverest writers of 
the " topical song " is Sydney Rosenfeld. 

He is in reality a Frenchman who has lost 
his way in America. 

To a foreigner the full meaning of a " top- 
ical song " referring to local politics is not 
always entirely clear, but Rosenfeld always 
manages to write with point and pith. 

While witnessing " Erminie," at the beau- 
tiful Casino in New York, I heard Francis 
Wilson sing the following verses alluding to 
the closing of music-halls by the police. 

"Tell us, Dickie birds, do, 
What makes Sunday laws so blue 
And likewise won't you please to make it clear, 
Why it is considered wrong, 
Ven you're listening to a song, 
To vet your whistles with a glass of beer ? 
Does the beer spoil the song? 
Or the song spoil the beer ? 
That is what don't appear werry clear. 
Is it a sin to drink gin, when the fiddlers are gay ? 
I wonder what the Dickie birds say ?" 

Like everything that is popular here, the 
travesty and the " topical song " are being 
done to death. 

Too many comedians allude to local poli- 



72 J^OX. UNCLK SAM. 

tics, to the detriment of the play which they 
interpret. 

I have seen some of the leading; fig^ures in 
the poHtics of the country travestied on the 
stage. Comedians boldly make up behind 
the footlights as IngersoU, or Ben Butler, or 
Conkling, or Thurman, or Garland. 

Too much " topical song " is a nuisance. 

Wilson is right when he sings : 

" I wish I had nodings to do all de night 
But to sing local songs to give you delight, 
But de duties I owe, don't you see, to the house, 
Compel me to turn my attention to Strauss. 
And local allusions dough great in effect. 
Ain't treating his nibbs mit sufficient respect. 
Besides, the foundation of genuine fun 
Ish to shtop before the fun is all done. 
Yen a ditty is not witty, it most always sometimes bores. 
And there should be some Committee, some Committee 

on encores. 
Vat a pity, pity, for a vitty ditty 
There's no Committee on encores." 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PAMPHLETEERS. 

I HAVE sometimes thought that Colonel 
Tom Ochiltree, of Texas, would have made 
a capital political pamphleteer. 

He is such an irrepressibly audacious 
speaker that he would, I am certain, have 
made a readable public writer. 

The old hat, the red hair, the yarns of 
Colonel Tom Ochiltree, have become proverb- 
ial here. 

Let me illustrate his presence of mind by 
an anecdote. 

" There was a section of Texas," Captain Davis relates, 
" which was populated almost entirely by sheep-raisers ; 
consequently the wool, and the tariff thereon, was of much 
importance to them, and always entered into political argu- 
ments. Now, Ochiltree knew as much about wool and the 
tariff as he does now about the inside of Trinity church, 
but he had to make a speech for all that. After talking 
for some time without saying anything that seemed to 
have the slightest effect upon the sheep men, Ochiltree 
was suddenly inspired. His eye beamed, his smile died 
73 



74 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



away, leaving an expression of extreme horror and fear- 
fulness, and his right hand was raised warningly. ' I'll 
tell you something, gentlemen, that I had hoped to be 
able to spare you,' said Ochiltree, in impressive tones. 
* You are not yet aware that the opposing party is about 
to visit upon your devoted heads a most terrible infliction.' 

" Here the crowd showed signs of awakening, and be- 
trayed some interest, 

" ' Yes,' continued the orator, * they have invented and 
are about to import into this fair State a most horrible 
thing — a polariscope, they call it, and to such intelligent 
men that is enough to say. Yes, gentlemen, a polariscope ! 
Think, then, of your misery and woe should those robbers 
get into power ! It is against such men that I ask you to 
elect me.' 

" A deep silence followed for a moment. The crowd 
grew fearful. What danger threatened them they did not 
know, and the awful uncertainty increased their terror. 
Finally the suspense was too great, and a dozen rose to 
their feet at once and asked, 'What is a polariscope?' 

"Ochiltree paused, and viewed the crowd with pitying 
glances, as though sincerely regretting their illiteracy. 
The question was repeated louder and stronger than before. 
Ochiltree shifted uneasily from one foot to another, took 
a glass of water, coughed, and then looked at the crowd, 
now clamoring wildly for knowledge of the terrible danger. 

" Ochiltree was cornered. The cries grew louder. The 
speaker waved his hand, and there was silence. Then the 
candidate leaned over his deal table and said, confiden- 
tially and quietly, ' Boys, I'm blest if I know what it is, 
but it'll kill all your sheep, sure as thunder !' 

"That was enough, and they voted for him." 



THE PA M PI ILK PEEKS. 



75 



" Oh, lend me that ! " exclaimed the Em- 
press Eug-enie to Gustave Flaubert at Com- 
piegne one day, as she perceived him surrep- 
titiously showing- a copy of the forbidden 
Lantej-ne, by Rochefort, to a friend. " It must 
be witty. I want to read it." 

No one, to my knowledge, ever said the 
same thing, expressed the same anxiety to 
read a pamphleteer of Uncle Sam. 

But I run before my horse to market. 

Let us see what the pamphleteers have 
done, and then decide. 

Two of the greatest pamphleteers who 
ever did service in the politics of Uncle Sam 
were born on the soil of John Bull. 

I mean Thomas Paine and William Cob- 
bett. 

They found pamphleteering a very brisk 
business when they landed in this country, 
and they went into the business with all the 
zest of Prynne and Lilburne, of Roger L' Es- 
trange and Daniel Defoe. 

Though Adams and Otis, Jefferson and 
Dickinson, had written pamphlets on public 
affairs, not one of their pamphlets had at- 
tracted the attention which, in 1776, was 
aroused by the ** Common Sense " of Thomas 



7^ 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



Paine. Terse, incisive, simple in style, this 
thin duodecimo was purchased throughout 
the country with as much eagerness as is a 
novel or a play suppressed by the author- 
ities. 

The opening words have become historic. 

"These are the times that try men's souls." 

The body of the work abounds in maxims 
as pithy as any in Bacon and as full of horse- 
sensfe as any in Franklin: 

" The nearer any Government approaches 
to a republic, the less business there is for a 
king." " The sun never shone on a cause 
of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a 
city, a county, a province, or a kingdom, but 
of a continent — of at least one-eighth part of 
the habitable globe. 'Tis not the concern of 
a day, a year, or an age ; posterity are virtu- 
ally involved in it even to the end of time." 

There are passages in " Common Sense" 
as lofty in style as any in the pamphlets of 
Edmund Burke, a man whom Thomas Paine 
most cordially detested. 

" Freedom hath been hunted round the 
globe : Asia and Africa have long expelled 
her ; Europe regards her like a stranger ; and 
England hath given her warning to depart. 



THE PAMPHLETEERS. yj 

Oh, receive the fugitive and prepare an asy- 
lum for mankind ! " 

For the service thus rendered, Paine re- 
ceived much honor from opponents of Great 
Britain, and, Vv^hat he probably hked better 
than honor, a gift of two thousand five hun- 
dred dollars from Pennsylvania. 

His " Crisis," his " Rights of Man," his 
" Age of Reason," were pamphlets which all 
had a tremendous run. 

Paine was given to drink. 

The boys in New York used to sing : 

" Tom Paine is come from far, from far, 
His nose is like a blazing star ! " 

He was hated, feared, or loved, in Phila- 
delphia and New York, in Paris and London. 

He hit hard, and he was hard hit. 

Bitter against Washington, because he had 
not intervened for him when in a French 
prison, Paine, in 1796, poured out his wrath 
on the head of the nation. 

The " Letter to George Washington, Presi- 
dent of the United States of America, on 
Affairs Public and Private, . by Thomas 
Paine" will, for virulence and vigor, compare 
with some of the pamphlets of Jonathan Swift. 



yS HON. UNCLE SAM. 

In the opinion of the pamphleteer, Wash- 
ington was gifted with " a sort of non-describ- 
able, chameleon -colored thing called pru- 
dence" rather than with high -principled 
character. 

Washington, according to Paine, was an 
ungrateful and vain, self-conscious man. 

"Treacherous in private friendship [for that you have 
been to me, and that in the day of danger], and a hypo- 
crite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide 
whether you are an apostate or an impostor ; whether you 
have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever 
had any. 

Party feeling never ran higher in the 
United States than during the early years of 
the Government. Voltaire, who on visiting 
London was surprised at the violence of the 
party passion which dubbed the Duke of 
Marlborough a coward, and Alexander Pope 
a fool, would, on visiting America in the first 
decade of the century, have found plenty of 
men who were even more bitter and partisan. 

Politics in democracies is nothing but the 
madness of the many for the benefit of 
the few. 

The Republicans and Federalists of those 



THE PAMPIILE 1 'EERS. 



79 



days grew fierce and vituperative, so that the 
Jeffersons, the Hamiltons, and the Burrs 
mig-ht profit by their evil passions. 

Tis much the same to-day as when Ben- 
jamin FrankHn wrote these youthful dog- 
gerel verses in a local paper : 

" The retail politician's anxious thought 
Deems this side always right and that stark naught. 
He foams with censure, with applause he raves, 
A dupe to rumors, and a tool to knaves." 

William Cobbett was a pamphleteer of 
that time and for that time. If he had lived 
in the days of the Great Rebellion, he would 
have overwhelmed Cromwell and the Round- 
heads with his pamphlets. As he lived in 
the era of a young Democracy, he assailed 
Jefferson, and the Republicans with them. 

The titles of his pamphlets, like those of 
so many of the olden time, were quaint and 
lengthy. 

There were, among others : 

" Comprehensive Story of a Farmer's Bull." 

" Democratic Memoirs." 

"The Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats." 

"The Democratic Principles." 

Issued under the noted pen name of " Peter 



So HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Porcupine " these pamphlets raised Cobbett's 
reputation to the highest pitch, and provoked 
a swarm of rephes, with titles as quaint and 
as lengthy. 

They were, "Twig of Birch for a Butting 
Calf." 

"A Roaster, or a Check to the Progress 
of Political Blasphemy," 

" A Pill for Porcupine " and " The Impos- 
tor Detected." 

Who cares for them now? Who reads 
them now ? 

One passage in one pamphlet from the 
pen of Peter Porcupine — his " Life and Ad- 
ventures," published in 1796 — has survived 
time. 

It is the famous comparison between his 
ancestry and that of Benjamin Franklin 
Bache, his rival pamphleteer and constant 
opponent. 

" Every one will, I hope, have the good- 
ness to believe that my grandfather was no 
philosopher. Indeed he was not. He never 
made a lightning-rod nor bottled up a quart 
of sunshine in his life. He was no almanac- 
maker nor quack, nor chimney doctor, nor 
soap - boiler, nor ambassador, nor printer's 



THE PAMPHLETEERS. 8l 

devil. Neither was he a deist ; and all his 
children were born in wedlock. The lega- 
cies he left were his scythe, his reap-hook, and 
his flail. He bequeathed no old and irre- 
coverable debts to a hospital. He has, it 
is true, been suffered to sleep quietly be- 
neath the greensward ; but if his descend- 
ants cannot point to his statue over the door 
of a library, they have not the mortification 
to hear him daily accused of having been a 
profligate, a hypocrite, and an infidel." 

This may be plain language, but it is de- 
cent language compared with that which 
was too common in the pamphlet literature 
of that day. 

Men who signed Americus, Camillus, Bru- 
tus, and Cato, Lucius and Franklin Bache, 
John Wood, William Duane, and James Thom- 
son Callender, each one of these pamphlet- 
eers indulged in epithets such as Junius dealt 
out to the Duke of Grafton, and such as Mil- 
ton poured over Claude Saumaise. 

But the pamphleteers of Uncle Sam had 
none of the other qualities which make us 
overlook the epithets of Junius and Milton. 

Their work is, from a literary point of view, 
absolutely worthless. 

6 



82 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

What grace, wit, elegance, was possessed 
by Paul Louis Courier, the pamphleteer who 
opposed the absolutism of the Bourbons, and 
who by his " Pamphlet des Pamphlets " pub- 
lished at the same time a master-piece of 
style and a master-piece of argument ! 

There is not a single pamphleteer of Uncle 
Sam's who comes up to the literary excel- 
lence of Courier. 

Now and then I run across some pamphlet 
that reads somewhat like those scattered 
abroad in France or England. 

Take, for instance, " A Shorter Catechism," 
issued in 1784, and read : 

" What is patriotism ?" 

" A hobby-horse." 

" What is liberty ?" 

" Licentiousness unbridled." 

The only men of that early period of 
Uncle Sam's history who could, if they 
would, have been excellent political pam- 
phleteers, were James K. Paulding, William 
Irving, and Washington Irving, the editors 
of the pamphlet periodical, '' Salmagundi." 

They touched very seldom on public 
affairs, and, when they did so, it was in a 
borrowed style. 



THE PAMPHLETEERS. 83 

Take, for instance, this extract from a 
" Letter of Mustapha Rub-A-Dub Keli Khan 
to his friend Assem Hachem, Slave Driver 
to his Highness, the Bashaw of TripoH." 

It is, of course, an imaginary letter, but it 
is based on observation of real life. 

'' Politics, a word which, I declare to thee, has perplex- 
ed me almost as much as the redoubtable one of economy, 
on consulting a dictionary of this language I found it de- 
noted the science of Government, and the relations, sit- 
uations, and dispositions of States and Empires. Good ! 
thought I ; for a people governing themselves there would 
not be a more important subject of investigation. I there- 
fore listened attentively, expecting to hear from ' the most 
enlightened people under the sun ' — for so they modestly 
term themselves, sublime disputations on the science of 
legislation, and precepts of political wisdom that would 
not have disgraced our great prophet and legislator him- 
self ! But alas, Assem ! how continually are my expecta- 
tions disappointed ? How dignified a meaning does this 
word bear in the dictionary ! how despicable its common 
application ! I find it extending to every contemptible 
discussion of local animosity, and every petty altercation 
of insignificant individuals. It embraces, alike, all man- 
ner of concerns ; from the organization of a divan, the 
election of a bashaw or the levying of an army, to the ap- 
pointment of a constable, the personal disputes of two 
miserable slang whangers, the cleaning of the streets, or 
the economy of a dirt-cart. A couple of politicians will 
quarrel, with the most vociferous pertinacity, about the 



84 J^ON. UNCLE SAM. 

character of a bum bailiff whom nobody cares for, or the 
department of a little great man whom nobody knows; and 
this is called talking politics !" 

This may be clever, but the manner is that 
of Montesquieu, who wrote the " Lettres 
Persannes," in which he satirized Paris, and 
the style is that of Goldsmith, who wrote 
the "Chinese Letters," in which he satirized 
London. 

There is little originality in the pamphlet 
literature of Uncle Sam. 

It is almost all copied after that of Great 
Britain. 

Benton, who wrote a " Thirty Years' View 
of American Politics," had perhaps the stuff 
of a pamphleteer in him. He certainly had 
virulence enough in his nature, as witness 
his attack on Gushing : 

" He is a man of learning, of talent. 
of industry — unscrupulous, double - sexed, 
double -gendered, and hermaphroditic in 
politics." 

Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, a young man who 
divides his time between reforming politics 
and shooting grizzly - bears, might be a 
pamphleteer if strong partisanship were an 
essential quality in the composition of one. 



THE PAMPHLErEERS. 



85 



" A sneaking doctrinaire with a constitu- 
tional proclivity to untruth." 

That is the way Mr. Roosevelt recently 
wrote of Jefferson. 

Some pamphleteers, like White and Hos- 
mer, had great success during the time of the 
Civil War, but nobody remembers them now. 

The trouble with them all is that they are 
heavy and soporific. 

Mr. Andrew Carnegie, a rich manufac- 
turer, published a pamphlet recently called 
"Triumphant Democracy," a plea for this 
country. 

It is a stupid work — all scissors and paste- 
pot. 

We may, in fact, say of most of the pam- 
phleteers of Uncle Sam what Canning is 
reported to have said of Sir John Hippisley's. 

They are so heavy that the Post-office re- 
fuses to carry them in an official frank. 

Men with pamphleteering propensities 
here now go into journalism, or write history, 
or mount the platform. 

They also contribute to the Forum and the 
North American Revieiv, two monthly maga- 
zines which are themselves capital remedies 
for insomnia. 



86 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Religious tracts, the annual reports of cor- 
porations, campaign documents, are the only 
pamphlets now read on the domain of Uncle 
Sam. 

I generally use them wherewith to light 
my cigarettes. 

I light one now, and as the rings of smoke 
curl upward, I wish I were over your way, 
my dear Count, sitting with you in front of 
a cafe on the boulevard. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE JOURNALISTS. 

" In the United States," once wrote Henry 
Ward Beecher, " every worthy citizen reads 
a newspaper, and owns the paper which he 
reads." 

If you ride in a street-car in the morning, 
in any city or town of this country, you are 
convinced of the truth of this dictum. 

There are 5,500 daily newspapers pubhshed 
in Germany ; 4,092 published in France ; 
4,000 published in Great Britain. 

There are 15,000 daily newspapers issued 
on the territory of Uncle Sam. 

The first newspaper, such as it was, appear- 
ed in Boston. 

Its title was comprehensive : 

Public k Occurrences y 

Both Foreif^n and Domestic. 

Boston, Thursday, September 25, 1690. 

Harris was the publisher. 
87 



88 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Then came the Bosto7i News Letter, \\\^ Phil- 
adelphia Mercm-y, and the Neiv Yoj^k Gazette. 

In those days the post - chaise between 
Boston and New York, a distance of eight 
hours by rail, set out once a fortnight in the 
winter months. 

To-day the great daihes of New York are 
sold in Washington — a distance of six hours 
— at 1 1 o'clock in the morning. 

One of the early journalists of Uncle Sam 
was John Peter Zenger, of the New York 
Weekly Joiirnal. 

In 1734 Zenger was arrested for alleged 
libel of the provincial Government and 
thrown into jail. He wrote letters and 
verses from his place of confinement. His 
spirit was strong, but his rhyme was weak. 

" Oh cruelty unknown before 
To any barbarous savage shore, 
Much more when men so much profess 
Humanity and Godliness !" 

The influential papers in the Colonies at 
the opening and during the struggle of the 
nephews of Uncle Sam against John Bull 
were three or four in number. 

Samuel Adams issued The Independent 



THE JOURNALISTS. . 89 

Advertiser ; Edes and Gill published The 
Boston Gazette ; and Philip Freneau publish- 
ed the Fr e email s Journal m Philadelphia. 

The history of early journalism in the 
United States was not without interesting- 
incidents. 

Alexander McDougall, an editor of the 
/ournal, was put into prison in 1770 for libel 
on the Assembly. He had received so many 
sympathetic visitors while in jail that he had 
to issue a card stating that he would be glad 
to have the honor of their company between 
3 and 6 o'clock. 

James Rivington, of the reactionary Royal 
Gazette, one day found his office invaded by 
the patriot, Colonel Ethan Allen. 

A huge mob howled outside. 

A bottle of excellent Madeira stood on the 
table. 

"■ Sir, I have come " — said the officer, per- 
emptorily 

" Not another word, my dear Colonel," re- 
plied the editor, " till you have taken a seat 
and a glass of that old Madeira." 

The patriot and the anti- patriot drank 
quietly, deeply, long, while the mob contin- 
ued to howl outside. 



90 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

The circulation of papers in these days 
was very Hmited. Campbell did not sell 
more than 300 copies of his N'ews Letter 
when Boston had a population of 8,000. 
Rivington published only 3,600 copies of 
the Gazette in i -j'j^, though New York had a 
population of something like 21,876 — I was 
going to say souls, but I remember what 
Wendell Phillips once said on this point : 

" Fifty millions of — not souls, gentlemen," he ex- 
claimed, in speaking of the population, " for it would be 
a great mistake to say that every man, woman, and child 
in this country has a soul." 

During the Revolutionary struggle — 1 776- 
81 — some of the anti-patriot journalists had 
a hard time. 

I have already mentioned Rivington. 

I cite another case. 

John Mein, of the Boston Chrouiele, was 
obliged to flee on account of his royalist 
opinions. 

It was customary in those days, in Boston, 
to drag an effigy of the Pope and the Devil 
through the streets on the 5th of Novembti 
of every year. 

Men and boys made an effigy of the un- 



THE JOURNALISTS. gi 

popular editor, and tacked on to it the fol- 
lowing verses : 

" Mean is the man, Mein is his name, 
Enough he's spread his hellish fame. 
Infernal furies hlirl his soul 
Nine millions times from pole to pole !" 

After the Revolution, the political party 
press was most acrimonious. 

Thomas Greenleaf, James Cheetham, Philip 
Freneau, carried on a deadly war with quills, 

Russell, of the Massachusetts Sentinel, and 
Austin, of the Chronicle, were bitter enemies. 
The one was a Federalist, the other a Repub- 
lican. Austin one day spoke contemptuously 
of his rival in Faneuil Hall, and, by way of 
reciprocity, Russell met Austin on 'Change, 
and spat into his face. 

Though Cobbett was as staunch a Feder- 
alist as himself, Russell didn't like him. 

" This imported, or transported, beast," he wrote of him, 
" has been kept as gentlemen keep a fierce ^////Z)^^^ against 
thieves, Jacobins, and Frenchmen, and as such he has been 
a good and faithful dog, and has been fed and caressed ac- 
cordingly. " 

Such was the style of journalistic inter- 
course in those days. 



92 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



The papers I have written about were not 
daihes. The first daily newspaper "pubHshed 
in the United States was issued in 1784 in 
Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin Bache. 
It was styled the Avicrican Daily Advertiser. 

The second daily was the Neiu York Daily 
Advertiser, published in 1785. 

One of the oldest papers in the country, still 
issued, is the Ei'eni}ig Post, of New York. It 
first appeared on the i6th of November,! 801, 
as the organ of the Federalists. William Cole- 
man was its editor, and among its contribu- 
tors were Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. 

Cheetham, of the Ameriean Citizen, and 
Duane, of the Aurora, were not always par- 
liamentary. 

In those days, patriot orators would make 
us believe everybody was wise, good, and 
happy. 

The good old days ! 

Cheetham called Duane a " low-bred for- 
eigner," and Duane retorted by branding 
Cheetham as " a base wretch." 

But why dwell longer on the past ? Why 
bother over long-forgotten worthies ? 

Let us come to the present. 

Mr. James Gordon Bennett, of the Herald, 



THE JOURNALISTS. 93 

Mr. Whitelaw Reid, of the Tribwie, Mr. 
George Jones, of the Times, Mr. Joseph Pul- 
itzer, of the World, Mr. Charles A. Dana, of 
the Stm, represent the great morning dailies 
of New York. 

Mr. Bennett edits the Herald by telegraph, 
from his yacht, from Paris, from anywhere 
he happens to be. 

The elder l^ennett founded the paper in 
1835, and soon made it a brilliant success. 

To-day it claims to have a legitimate daily 
circulation of 195,000. The Bennetts both 
were quick to use the most improved meth- 
ods for gathering news. In 1846 the Herald, 
under the elder Bennett, first received tele- 
graphic news from Washington. In 1887 
yoimg Bennett spent more money than any 
other newspaper editor for telegraphic news 
from all parts of the world. 

Young Mr. Bennett has a scar over the 
bridge of his nose, received in a duel, or 
fight, or something. 

Old Mr. Bennett was a capital story-teller. 
He used to recount, with a certain gusto, the 
history of the duel between Clinton and 
Swartwout. There were three shots ex- 
changed without effect. 



94 



HOy. UNCLE SAM. 



" Is your principal satisfied ?" asked Riker, 
Clinton's second, after each fire. 

" He is not," replied Swartvvout's second. 

The fourth shot was then exchanged, and 
Swartwout received Clinton's ball in the calf 
of his leg. 

" Is your principal satisfied now ?" again 
asked Riker. 

" He is not." 

The fifth ball was discharged, and Clin- 
ton's ball again lodged in Swartwout's leg. 

" Is your principal satisfied now ?" asked 
Riker. 

Swartwout, bleeding profusely, told the 
second he was not." 

"Well, well !" exclaimed Clintoji ; " he may 
go to the devil ! I'll fire no more." 

Though the Herald is a success, the World, 
Luuler Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, is pressing it hard. 
Three years ago this paper had a circula- 
tion of from 15,000 to 20,000. To-day. if 
the attesting notary lie not. it boasts of 
150,000. 

Mr. Pulitzer came to New York from St. 
Louis. He is a political speaker, too. and de- 
livers himself in the staccato fashion charac- 
teristic of Emile de Girardin. 



THE JOURNALISTS. 95 

The best thing about him is his beautiful 
wife. 

The Herald is independent in poHtics; the 
World is mildly Democratic. 

The New York Tribune is the representa- 
tive organ of the out-and-out Republicans. 
Mr. Whitelaw Reid, an associate of Horace 
Greeley, who founded the paper, is its editor. 

He married a lady, a daughter of D.. O. 
Mills, whose ducats aided him considerably. 

The founder of the New York Times, 
which is the professed organ of the Independ- 
ent Republicans, was Henry J. Raymond. 
The present editor is Mr. George Jones. 

Horace Greeley once called Henry Ray- 
mond " little villain." 

The present editors, successors of Greeley 
and Raymond, hate each other cordially 
even unto this day. 

Mr. Jones thinks nothing of calling Mr. 
Reid a liar, and Mr. Reid is not backward in 
implying that Mr. Jones is a thief. 

A big metropolitan daily is a valuable prop- 
erty, estimated at over $1,000,000. 

Editors are as kings. Reporters, correspon- 
dents, agents, all over the world are their 
ambassadors. Politicians crowd their ante- 



96 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

rooms and court their favor. To gain their 
good graces the aspiring statesman will do 
much, and to reward them, if successful, 
statesmen have ever been prompt and ready. 

I cannot begin to give you a list of the 
journalists who have received foreign mis- 
sions in return for newspaper services. 

Mr. Charles A. Dana, of the New York 
Sun, is an out-and-out Democrat, by profes- 
sion. He can say disagreeable things in the 
most artistic way. 

At heart he is an aristocrat, with a fondness 
for bric-a-brac and fine pictures. 

His paper throws milk-sops to the poor 
workingman. 

Mr. Murat Halstead, of the Cincinnati 
Gazette, is one of the most violent journal- 
ists in the country. This man, who during 
the late war wanted Sherman turned out 
of the army for insanity, and Grant for 
drunkenness ; who thought Lincoln ought to 
be taken by the heels and dashed against a 
wall — this hot-tempered literary cow-boy now 
amuses himself by attacking the President. 

"The fraudulent President of the United States," said 
he, recently, " has taken the back track on the rebel flag 
question. He has, as the Indian said, vamoosed, absquat- 



THE JOURNALISTS. 97 

ulated, puccageed, retired. In a word, he has heard from 
the country and has heeded. Public opinion has pene- 
trated the hide of the Executive rhinoceros. The gigantic 
neck that is the boast of the muscular Democracy has 
been bowed in stolid submission. The prestige of Mr. 
Cleveland, built upon a series of fictions and assumptions, 
has suffered irreparable damage. He has been knocked 
down and dragged out. This is the slashing beginning 
of the speedy end of him." 

That is a specimen of Western journalism. 

When these men wish to be strong, they 
become brutal. 

That's an Anglo-Saxon trait. 

Mr. Henry Watterson, of the Louisville 
Coui'i^r -Journal, is an adept poker player, a 
doughty drinker, and a ready and forcible 
writer. 

Some of his sentences are as pithy as those 
of Vacquerie. 

" Appointments mean disappointments," 
said he, apropos of some of the President's 
nominations to office. 

I do not know whether we ought to be 
grateful to Mr., Henry Watterson for having 
first advocated Mary Anderson in print as a 
great actress. 

That frigid beauty bores me terribly. 

Mr. Edwin Godkin, of the Evening Post, 

7- 



gS HON. UNCLE SAM. 

of New York, is one of the ablest and best- 
informed newspaper men in the country. 
"He is an Irishman by birth, an EngHsh Lib- 
eral by conviction, and an American Inde- 
pendent by profession. 

His manner is patronizing. His tone is 
ironical. 

He delights in a sneer quite as much as 
Gibbon did. 

It was he, I believe, who alluded to the 
loungers on the city park benches as "our 
leisure classes." 

Mr. Godkin hates Mr. Blaine, and Mr. Dana 
hates Mr. Godkin. 

New York is full of bright political writers. 

Mr. Joseph Howard, Jr., quick, forward, 
and familiar, is a chipper, gossipy, feuilleton- 
esque writer. 

The ladies of the stage like him. 

Mr. Charles R. Miller, of the Thnes, polite 
and genial, a linguist and a diner-out, writes 
a hand like Horace Greeley. His copy, too, 
is somewhat like that of Choate. 

It looks like a gridiron struck by lightning. 

What Mr. Amos Cummings, of the Sun, 
Mr. Horace White, of the Post, Mr. Ballard 
Smith, of the World, Mr. Benjamin Wood, 



THE JOURNALISTS. gg 

of the Nezvs, don't know of politics, you can 
put into your match-box. 

Mr. Cummings is also a Representative in 
Congress, from New York. 

He speaks quite as picturesquely as he 
writes. 

Most of the editors of Uncle Sam, I should 
add, are much better informed on our poli- 
tics than we are on theirs. 

The newspapers of New York are not as 
influential throughout the United States as 
the newspapers of Paris are throughout 
France. 

There is no centralization of intelligence 
here. 

Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, San 
Francisco, Boston, Cincinnati, rival New 
York in journalistic enterprise. Mr. Medill, 
of the Chicago Tribune, Mr. McLean of the 
Cincinnati Eftquirer, Mr. McClure, of the 
Philadelphia Times, Mr. Field, of the Chi- 
cago News, Mr. Childs, of the Philadelphia 
Ledger, are most powerful. 

Some of the editors have a tremendous 
opinion of their importance. 

Mr. Dorsheimer, of the New York Star, 
was one of these. 



lOO IIOX. rXCLE SAM. 

He was walking- along a country road on 
a summer day and met William R. Travers, 
the witty clubman, in a buggy. He was 
asked to jump in and take a seat. 

" I am afraid there isn't room," said Air. 
Dorsheimer. 

" D-d-don't y-you think," replied Travers, 
stuttering, " that, that p-p-p-perhaps. you. 
vou. aren't such a b-b-b-bior man as vou think 



vou are 



\ I I" 



Self-interest is largely at the bottom of 
the politics of most of the editors of Uncle 
Sam. Mr. Pulitzer, of the U^or/d, disliked 
President Cleveland for some time because 
he did not appoint his friend Gibson to the 
post of Minister at Berlin. Mr. Whitelaw 
Reid. of the Tribune, advocated Mr. Blaine 
for President because he knew that under 
his administration he would get a Cabinet 
oiTice. Mr. Bennett, of the Herald, supports 
Cleveland because Cleveland appointed Mr. 
Isaac Bell, Jr., his brother-in-law, Minister to 
the Netherlands. The opposition of Mr. 
Dana, of the Sun, to President Cleveland had 
its root in the unwillingness of President 
Cleveland to appoint his friend Bartlett to 
some office. 



THE JOURNALISTS. lOI 

William Henry Hurlbert, who used to be 
the brilhant editor of the World, and who 
wrote strong letters to the Herald for Cleve- 
land during" the last campaign, now bitterly 
hates the President. 

He expected a mission, and didn't get it. 

We read of vituperation in the early his- 
tory of the journalism of Uncle Sam. Duff 
Green hated James Watson Webb. Major 
Noah and Park Benjamin hated James Gor- 
don Bennett. We have seen that Clinton 
and Swartwout hated each other so thor- 
oughly that they exchanged not only adjec- 
tives, but pistol-shots. 

In the old slavery days, when Brooks, of 
South Carolina, attacked Sumner, of Massa- 
chusetts, with a cane in the Senate Chamber, 
and knocked him senseless, the Richmond 
Whig wrote: "The only regret we feel is 
that Mr. Brooks did not employ a horse-whip 
upon his slanderous back instead of a cane." 

The Petersburg Intelligencer spoke of" the 
blackguard Sumner." 

This was all very bad, but it was hardly 
worse than what Mr. Dana wrote of Presi- 
dent Cleveland just before his election about 
three years ago. 



I02 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

" If his mode of life is beastly ; if he is given to coarse 
intrigues and purchased amours ; if he is, in short, not a 
man, but an animal, then we do not want him for President 
of the United States. We do not believe the American 
people will knowingly elect to the Presidency a coarse 
debauch^, who would bring his harlots with him to Wash- 
ington and hire lodgings for them conveniently to the 
White House." 

There are libel laws in this country, but 
they are seldom called into use. 

I have spoken, en passant, of the great 
editors. 

I want to say a word of their correspond- 
ents at Washington. 

There are about 102 of them here, repre- 
senting 105 daily papers. 

The dean of them all was Ben Perley 
Poore, of the Providence Joni-nal and the 
Boston Biidoet. 

General Henry V. Boynton, a soldier as 
well as a writer, represents the Cincinnati 
Commercial Gazette. Mr. Charles Nordhoff 
is the representative of the New York 
Herald. 

These older men, thrown in with several 
generations of politicians, have a great fund 
of anecdotes. 

It is amusing to sit in the offices of their 



THE JOURNALISTS. IO3 

papers in Washington, and hear them speak 
of the past. 

Ben Perley Poore was an authority on 
Lincoln. 

" Mr. Lincoln was hardly installed in the 
White House," he tells us, " before the wild 
hunt for office commenced. Among other 
good stories told of him was one of a man 
who came day after day asking for a foreign 
mission. At last the President, weary of his 
face, said : * Do you know Spanish ?' ' No,' 
said the eager aspirant, ' but I could soon 
learn it.' ' Do so,' said Mr. Lincoln, ' and I 
will giv^e you a good thing.' The needy 
politician hurried home and spent six months 
m studying Ollendorf's Grammar. He then 
reappeared at the White House with a hope- 
ful heart and a fine Castilian accent, and 
the President presented him with a copy of 
* Don Quixote,' in Spanish." 

The lobby — that great devil-fish whose 
tentacles clutch clammily at the National 
Treasury — could never get on the blind side 
of Mr. Lincoln. He treated them with cour- 
tesy, but would never encourage their 
schemes. His favorite among the Washing 
ton correspondents was Mr. Simon B. Hans- 



I04 ^^^^' U^^'CLE SAM. 

com, a shrewd Bostonian, who had been 
identified with the earher anti-slavery move- 
ments, and who used to keep Mr. Lincohi 
informed as to what w^as going on in Wash- 
ington, carrying him what he heard, and sel- 
dom asking a favor. " I see you state," 
said the President to Hanscom one day, 
" that my administration will be the ' reign 
of steel.' Why not add that Buchanan's 
w-as the reign of stealing ?" 

Mr. Boynton relates what Forney, of the 
Philadelphia Press, told him of his autograph 
collection. 

" Washington's state papers, his letters and his accounts, 
are models of order and cleanliness, rather set off by his 
anticiue spelling. James Madison wrote a small, beauti- 
ful hand, in keeping with his chaste and classic oratory. 
General Jackson wrote with the direct boldness of his 
nature, though somewhat indifferent as to his orthography. 
James Buchanan prided himself upon his cautious style, 
his careful spelling, his exact punctuation, and the absence 
of interlineations. Henry Clay wrote plainly, like an out- 
spoken and intrepid soul. Webster's hand, without being 
ornate, was strong. George M. Dallas was a master of 
the art : nothing could be more exquisite or more grace- 
ful, in manner and matter, than his notes and letters. 
John Van Buren was not nearly so exact as his great 
father. Albert Gallatin wrote like copper-plate. Stephen 
A. Douglas dashed off his letters without much regard to 



THE JOURNALISTS. IO5 

appearance. He seemed to be always under a high pres- 
sure, and what he wrote was written with intense feehng. 
John C. Fremont signs his name boldly, a little after the 
Dickens style. William H. Seward was excessively par- 
ticular in the preparation of his speeches, and composed 
with deliberation. I heard an old stenographer say that 
after he had taken down Mr. Seward, literally, in one of 
his greatest efforts, and presented him the full report, the 
statesman recast the whole discourse, and sent it to the 
printer's in his own hand." 

Mr. Nordhoff, of the Herald, often goes 
back to the past. 

" The visitors at the house of the late 
Mr. Seaton, of \k\^ Natio7ial Intelligencer ,' he 
will tell you, perhaps, " included all the 
leading personages of the day ; and even 
John Randolph was softened by the accom- 
plishments of Mrs. Seaton. Mr. Randolph 
sat near Mr. Seaton, and on one occasion, 
when Mr. Clay, speaking in his not unusual 
personal and self - sufficient strain, said, 
among other things, that * his parents had 
left him nothing but indigence and ignor- 
ance,' Randolph, turning to Mr. Seaton, 
said in a stage whisper to be heard by the 
company : ' That gentleman might continue 
the alliteration, and add insole^ice! " 

I come to some more correspondents. 



I06 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Mr. Elbridge G. Dunnell represents the 
New York Times. He is a master statisti- 
cian, a clear writer. He looks young, but is, 
in experience, old. 

Mr. M. G. Seckendorf is the correspondent 
of the New York Trtbziue. He is distingue 
in appearance, and reliable. 

Mr. T. C. Craw^ford writes to the New 
York World. 

Most of these regular correspondents at 
Washington belong to the ** Gridiron," a club 
where good-cheer and good-fellowship go 
together. 

The biggest politician in Washington 
treats the visiting-cards of the leading corre- 
spondents with respect. These men often 
make public opinion, voice it, all through the 
dominion of Uncle Sam. 

Every large daily in the country has its 
regular office in Washington, and it is kept 
up at great expense. The communications 
with the home office are carried on by tele- 
graph. 

If Mrs. Cleveland takes a drive on Penn- 
sylvania Avenue at 3 o'clock in the afternoon 
in Washington, or Mrs. Secretary Whitney 
is confined with a girl, the great news is 



THE JOURNALISTS. I07 

known in San Francisco at 7 o'clock the next 
morning-. 

Mr. E. B. Wight, who is the correspond- 
ent of the Chicago Intei^ - Ocean and the 
Boston Jotirnal, looks very much like M. de 
Blowitz. 

Mr. Harrington is the New York corre- 
spondent of the Chicago Tribzme, and an 
amiable and able man he is, too. 

Mr. William C. McBride is one of the most 
pungent of the journalists here. 

I remember he once compared the head 
of a certain politician to a prize pumpkin at 
a fair. 

Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, of the Cleveland 
Leader, signs his letters " Carp," just as that 
well-known journalist, Mr. George Alfred 
Townsend, now in New York, signs his 
" Gath." 

They both have a wide acquaintance with 
public men, they both write in an entertain- 
ing, if in the long run somewhat monotonous, 
way. 

I don't remember whether it was Mr. Car- 
penter or Mr. Townsend who recently told 
this story of Judge Poland, of Vermont. 

I produce it, all the same : 



I08 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

" Judge Poland dined at the St. Johnsbury House one 
day, and remarked to some friends that he was feeling un- 
usually well. ' Monday,' he said, ' I am to speak^at Hyde 
Park ' ; and this recalled a bit of experience in speech-mak- 
ing, which he recounted in his own inimitable way. ' It 
was at the county fair in Bradford,' he said, ' some years 
ago, and I was down for an agricultural speech. Some 
distance from the stand a trial of working oxen was in 
progress. But I had a good audience, and was just get- 
ting warmed up to my subject when, '■'■ Gee ! Haw ! Buck !" 
came from the testing-ground, and in another instant my 
audience was gone. Those oxen could draw and hold an 
audience better than I could.' " 

Let us resume our promenade on " News- 
paper Row," in Washington. 

Messenger boys run against us. The 
sound of the telegraph chcks in our ears. 

Here is Colonel Cockrill, of the World, the 
able right-hand man of Mr. Pulitzer. 

He looks like a man who would shoot a 
man in self-defense, and he did shoot Slay- 
back, of St. Louis, some years ago. 

Cockrill affirms that Slayback came into 
the office and threatened his life. 

Mr. Ouinton Washington represents the 
New Orleans Picayune, Mr. John M. Carson 
writes for the Philadelphia Ledger. Mr. 
Frederick Perry Powers telegraphs to the 



THE JOURNALISTS. IO9 

Chicago Times. Mr. A. M. Lyman is the 
correspondent of the New York Sun. Mr. 
O. O. Stealey does good work for the Louis- 
ville Cou7'ier-J ournaL Mr. Edmund Hudson 
sends letters to the Boston Herald. Mr. 
Frank H. Richardson corresponds for the 
Baltimore Sun. Mr. Charles T. Towle finds 
time to write to the Ti^aveller, of Boston. 
Mr. R. J. Wynne wires to the Globe-Democrat, 
of St. Louis. 

What do you care about these names ? 
What do most people, even here, know or 
care about them ? 

Journalists here rarely sign their articles. 
People read them without asking by whom 
is written what they read. 

The difference between an Englishman 
and a Frenchman, says Theodore Child, can 
be told immediately by observing how each 
regards a woman on horseback. 

The Englishman looks first of all at the 
horse, the Frenchman first of all at the 
woman. 

We in France look immediately to the foot 
of an article for the signature. 

Is it signed by Weiss ? by About } we 
ask ; by Sarcey ? by Lemoinne ? 



I lo HON. UNCLE SAM. 

They do not ask that question here. 

One of the few journaUsts in Washington 
who signs his articles is Mr. Crawford, of 
the World. 

He is a great interviewer, an interesting, 
newsy writer. 

I remember his paper on Governor Curtin, 
ex-Minister to Russia. 

On one occasion, he tells us : 

" Mr. Curtin went to London for a little rest and change. 
Napoleon III. was then at Chiselhurst. During Curtin's 
stay in London, Chevalier Wyckoff called upon him. He 
asked him if he would like to call upon the ex-Emperor. 
Mr. Curtin replied that he would not think of calling upon 
him without receiving an intimation from Napoleon that 
he wished to see him. The next day one of the aides-de- 
camp of Napoleon called upon him and asked him to visit 
the ex-Emperor at his earlist convenience. Mr. Curtin 
named 3 o'clock the next day. He was received with a 
great deal of warmth. The ex-Emperor talked for a long 
time about his own career, his poverty, his former life in 
London, and his visit to New York. Finally, after nearly 
two hours of talk, he came to the real point of his desire 
to see Curtin. He said to him : ' You are on intimate terms 
with Gortschakoff. Have you any objection to telling me 
what are his real views upon the subject of the re-estab- 
lishment of the Empire ? ' 'I know what his sentiments 
upon this subject are,' said Mr. Curtin, 'but they are of 
such a nature that I do not feel at liberty to communicate 
them to you.' ' I understand you,' said the ex-Emperor, 



THE JOURNALISTS. HI 

'and am much obliged to you for your civility in 
calling.' 

" Gortschakoff's opinion, which Mr. Curtin withheld, had 
been very vigorously expressed. He said that this ' dam- 
ned French scoundrel ' should never have any help from 
him in getting back his throne, as he regarded him as a 
man dangerous to the peaceful condition of affairs in Eu- 
rope. When Curtin returned to St. Petersburg. Gortscha- 
koff invited him to dinner. During the dinner he said to 
Curtin, * You have been away ?' ' Yes ; in London.' 'You 
saw many people there?' 'Yes.' 'A number of dis- 
tinguished people ? ' ' Yes, I saw some prominent Ameri- 
can friends of mine.' ' I am told that you also saw the 
man who at one time seemed to hold in his hands the 
destinies of Europe.' 'Yes, I saw him,' said Mr. Cur- 
tin. ' Have you any objections to telling me the nature 
of the conversation you had with him ? ' * It was not im- 
portant,' was the reply ; ' it was mainly upon personal 
topics.' Here Gortschakoff said, with a very knowing 
look, ' I know all the details of that conversation. I am 
very much obliged to you for your discretion in not com- 
municating to Louis Napoleon my views upon the re- 
establishment of the French Empire.' As there was no 
third person present at the interview between Mr. Curtin 
and the ex-Emperor, this interview gave him a very high 
opinion of the completeness of the Russian spy service." 

However all these journalists may differ 
in politics, intelligence, rectitude, they all 
have one point in common : they are all 
anxious for news ; they look down on the 
past ; they crave for the present. 



I I 2 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

We are told that a young writer one day 
came to Larousse with a manuscript. 

"What is the subject of your paper?" 
asked the atheist journahst of the timid as- 
pirant. 

" Monsieur, the subject of the paper which 
I have the honor to submit to your consider- 
ate attention is God — " 

Ca vianquc tVactualitc, blandly replied the 
newspaper man. " Your copy lacks newsi- 
ness, timeliness ! " 

Four out of five of the journalists of Uncle 
Sam would have said the same thmg. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CARICATURISTS. 

We have been in many lands together, my 
dear Count; we have observed carefully, and 
we have read much. 

I, for my part, have found no country 
where there are so many oddities, incongru- 
ities, absurdities, abuses, as in this land of 
freedom. 

What a field, this, for a caricaturist ! 

How Aristophanes would have rubbed 
his hands to have as his subjects the politi- 
cians of Uncle Sam ! 

I will divide the caricaturists here into 
two classes. 

I will speak of those who caricature with 
the pen, and those who caricature with the 
pencil. 

Mr. James Russell Lowell is one of their 
cleverest caricaturists with the pen. He has 
hit, as no one else has done, those familiar 
figures in politics here called tlie " sages," 

8. 113 



114 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



men who look wise, live in retirement, and 
speak in slow and ponderous and ambiguous 
fashion on public affairs. 

Turning- the pages of the *• Biglow Pa- 
pers," written against the Mexican War, you 
run across such a " sage," the portrait of 
Robinson, of Massachusetts, as drawn by 
one of his admirers. 

" We were gettin' on nicely up here to our village, 

With good old idees o' what's right and what ain't. 
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war and pillage, 
And that eppylets weren't the best mark of a saint; 
But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee. 

" Parson Wilber sez he never heard in his life 

Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swyller-tail coats 
And marched round in front of a drum and a fife, 
To git some on 'em office, and some on 'em votes, 
But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez they didn't know everything down in Judee. 

" Wal, it's a marcy we've quiet folks to tell us 

The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow. 
God sends country lawyers, and other wise fellers, 
To drive the world's team when it gets in a slough, 
Fer John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez the world'U go all right, ef he hollers out 'Gee !' " 



THE CA RICA TUNIS TS. 



"5 



Do you note the sarcasm mingled with 
exaggeration in this dialect caricature ? 

Can you understand it ? 

The leading cartoonist with the pencil, 
for a long time, was Mr. Thomas Nast. 

He is a German by birth, short, stumpy, 
natty. 

His work is to be found in Harpei^' s 
Weekly, and he has many admirers. 

He made his hit at the time when Tweed, 
a New York politician, by his patronage of 
office, distribution of pelf, and stuffing of 
ballot-boxes, virtually held the metropolis 
in his hand. The ring of thieves under the 
leadership of Tweed put their fingers into 
the city treasury and helped themselves. 

Nast was untiring in his efforts to break 
this ring. 

Week after week he issued cartoons 
against them. 

His greatest success was the companion 
caricatures, " Wholesale and Retail." 

On one side he represented Hall, Tweed, 
Sweeney, and Connolly, filling their pockets 
with the contents of the State safe, and then 
coming out unmolested into the street, 
saluted by two lines of policemen. 



Il6 HON. UNLLE SAM. 

This was " Wholesale." 

On the other side, the cartoonist repre- 
sented a poor man breaking into a baker's 
shop and stealing a loaf of bread in the 
window. His starving wife and child stand 
at a corner of the street. Policemen run up, 
beat him and seize him. 

This was " Retail." 

What a contrast ! What a lesson ! 

Everybody understood it. 

Tweed feared and hated Nast. 

*' I don't care what they say or write about 
me," he remarked, " but I wish those infer- 
nal pictures were stopped. They hurt." 

The leading colored cartoon paper here is 
Puck; its leading artist is Mr. Joseph Kep- 
pler. 

Tall, dashing, picturesque in dress he is, 
like Nast, a native of Germany. 

He was, by turns, an actor, a manager, a 
confectioner. 

To-day he is rich; has a villa on the Hud- 
son; dines with the President when he comes 
to Washington. 

Mr. Keppler, who is an excellent draughts- 
man, uses his pencil with especial skill 
against temperance fanatics, against ambi- 



THE CAKICA TURISTS. 



17 



tious ecclesiastics, against the pretended 
friends of the workingman. 

They say the ideas of his cartoons are 
given him by his friends. 

The execution of them, however, is all his 
own. 

Bosses with big heads' big bellies, big dia- 
monds, are his pet game. 

John Kelly, who used to rule New York, 
was an especially favorite subject of Mr. 
Keppler's. 

The insolence of political bosses, the exag- 
gerations of political campaigns, the corrup- 
tion of high officials, are pet topics for the 
caricaturists. 

The representative cartoon paper of the 
Republicans is Judge, published in New 
York. 

Mr. Bernhard Gillam, a medium-sized, 
thin man, with bright, quick eyes, is its 
leading artist. He was born in England, but 
he received his education in New York. 

Somewhat wooden in his artistic methods, 
uncertain in his execution, wretched in his 
coloring, Gillam is full of ideas and very 
versatile. 

He originated the " Tattooed Man," rep- 



I I 8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

resenting- Mr. Blaine during the last cam 
paig-n as covered with all the marks of 
political corruption. Mr. Gillam, who was 
formerly on Puck, and rather coquetted with 
the Democracy, is now out-and-out for the 
Republicans. 

Political sunmiersaults are quite as com- 
mon among- newspaper men and cartoon- 
ists of Uncle Sam as among us. 

They could have a " Dictionnaire des Gi- 
rouettes " quite as interesting as that by 
Proissy d'Eppes. 

Toujours l' argent. 

One odd characteristic of American picto- 
rial caricature is this : 

The cartoonists habitually put the name of 
a politician on some part of his picture — just 
as though the public did not recognize him 
without this precaution ! 

This is primitive and unartistic. 

When I see this done, I always feel like 
exclaiming : 

" Libel the politicians, gentlemen, but do 
not label them." 

The leading comic paper of the West is 
the Wasp, in San Francisco. It is run by a 
man by the name of Gassaway, and is bold 



THE CA RICA TUKIS TS. 



119 



and unscrupulous in its methods. I am 
sometimes amazed how terribly he lashes 
the powerful railroad magnates. 

But politicians and magnates don't seem 
to mind these things here. 

One day in the Senate, we are told, Senator 
Voorhees exhibited a cartoon from the Wasp, 
in which a fox, with Mr. Blaine's head, lay 
pretending to be dead in a field, but with 
one eye very wide open indeed. A flock of 
geese, each wearing the face of some Presi- 
dential possibility, such as Senators Sher- 
man, Evarts, Hoar, Hiscock, etc., were trip- 
ping cautiously up to see if Mr. Fox was 
really dead. 

Nobody in the Senate Chamber was more 
amused than the illustrious gentlemen satir- 
ized by the disrespectful artist. Senator 
Sherman held it off at arm's length, and 
laughed the peculiar low chuckle which does 
duty as a laugh for him until he was tired. 
Senator Hoar grinned sympathetically. Sen- 
ator Hiscock and Senator Evarts exchanged 
dignified jokes on the subject. It was the 
only thing that occurred in the Senate dur- 
ing the whole week that was not as dull as 
ditch-water. 



I20 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Mr. Thomas Worth, of Texas Siftings, 
is an adept at depicting the comicaUties of 
low poHtical hfe. The newly enfranchised 
negro is his especial hobby. He is skillful, 
too, in portraying the typical Uncle Sam in 
his high hat, his short trousers, his swallow- 
tail coat, with his hooked nose, his firm 
mouth, and his goatee. 

Mr. Rogers, of Life, manufactures his po- 
litical cartoons for the boudoir and the parlor. 

Mr. Zimmerman and Mr. Taylor, oi Judge 
and Puck respectively, are bold, original, and 
effective 

Mr. McDougall, of the World, has an oc- 
casional squib on local politicians. 

He is rather coarse in his methods. 

I have often wondered that none of the 
clever cartoonists of Paris has ever come 
over here and made caricatures of the politi- 
cians of Uncle Sam. 

The French, by-the-way, do not play an 
important role in this country. 

According to the census of i8So, there 
were only 106,971 of French nativity in the 
United States. 

They flock to New York, San Francisco, 
New Orleans, and settle there for a time. 



THE CARICATURISTS. 121 

But the French take Httle interest in pub- 
lic affairs. 

They read the Cou7'ier des Etats Unis, of 
New York, forget Httle, and learn little. 

Mr. Philip Cusachs, of the Graphic, is a 
fertile political cartoonist. 

Like most of his American colleagues, 
however, he makes portraits rather than cari- 
catures. 

Mr. Cusachs speaks French and rolls cigar- 
ettes with ease. 

Mr. Constantin de Grimm is fitted for 
Berlin or Paris rather than for New York. 

He has not at all penetrated himself with 
the spirit of the politics of Uncle Sam. 

His work is redolent of the Boulevard des 
Italiens and the Maximilianstrasse. 

Though the caricaturists of the pencil are 
clever, I think those of the pen are more so. 

Take Mr. Newell's parody of the style 
of the " lady correspondents " at Wash- 
ington. 

The writer is supposed to describe a scene 
in the East Room of the White House dur- 
ing a reception. 

" The charming Mrs. L., of lUinuis, was richly attired 
in a frock and gloves, and wore a wreath of flowers from 



122 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

amaranthine bowers. She was affable as an angel with a 
new pair of wings, and was universally allowed to be the 
most beautiful woman present. 

"The enthralling Miss C, from Ohio, was elegantly 
clad in a dress, and wore number four gaiters. So brill- 
iant was her smile that, when she laughed at one of Lord 
Lyons's witticisms, all one corner of the room was wrapped 
in a glare of light, and several nervous dowagers cried 'Fire!' 
Her beauty was certainly the most beautiful present. 

*' The fascinating Miss L., of Pennsylvania, was su- 
perbly robed in an attire of costly material, with expensive 
flounces. She wore two gloves and a complete pair of 
ear-rings, and spoke so musically that the leader of the 
Marine band thought there was an yEolian harp in the win- 
dow. She was certainly the most beautiful woman present. 

"The bewitching Mrs. G., from Missouri, was splendidly 
dressed in a breast-pin and lace flounces, and wore her 
hair brushed back from her forehead like Mount Athos. 
Her eyes reminded one of diamond springs sparkling in 
the shade of whispering willows. She was decidedly the 
finest type of beauty present. 

" The President wore his coat and whiskers, and bowed 
to all salutations like a graceful door-hinge." 

We in Europe consider ourselves of su- 
preme importance, and yet our politics some- 
times seem ridiculously small to the carica- 
turists here. 

Read what Mr. Alden, of the Times — now 
Consul at Rome — wrote of our French-An- 
dorran complications, a few years ago. 



THE CA RICA TURIS TS. I 2 3 

" It is evident that Europe is on the verge of another 
great war. France has announced that in case the Repub- 
Hc of Andorra shall persist in refusing to satisfy certain 
claims, offensive operations against that obstinate State 
will be begun at once. This is clearly an ultimatum, and 
as Andorra has never been lacking in self-respect and 
courage, it is highly improbable that she will accede to 
the peremptory demand made by France. 

" Andorra has been hitherto singularly fortunate in 
escaping war. In 1831 there was a diplomatic dispute 
between Andorra and France. A large Frenchman, who 
was riding on horseback along the northern frontier of 
Andorra, was thrown over the fence, and before he could 
regain his feet, he had unintentionally laid waste a large 
tract of cultivated territory. Andorra's demand for dam- 
ages was, however, promptly met by the French Govern- 
ment, and the danger of. a collision averted. Two years 
later there was a dispute between Andorra and Spain rela- 
tive to the invasion of the Andorran back fence by Spanish 
cats. These animals were accustomed to sit on the fence 
at night and keep the entire population awake; and the 
loss of public and private bottles, boots, and other articles 
thrown at the cats, was a serious drain upon the resources, 
of the republic. A demand was made that Spain should 
keep her own cats at home, but the demand was rejected. 
Fortunately, the annual Carlist insurrection broke out 
just at that time, and the Carlists devoured every cat in 
the north of Spain, thus averting the bloody conflict 
between Spain and Andorra which had seemed to be in- 
evitable. 

'' At the present moment Andorra is straining every 
nerve to make ready to repel French invasion. The Min- 



124 ^^^''^' ^^'^^^ •^^^^• 

ister of the Marine has, with his own hands, drawn the 
navy on shore, painted it, and supplied it with a new pair 
of oars. The Government Arsenal is working day and 
night to repair the lock of the musket belonging to the 
Second Army Corps. The Government has advertised for 
bids for the construction of a wheelbarrow for the Com- 
missary Department, and has made a contract with a 
Manchester firm for the delivery of a seven-barreled 
revolver. The First Army Corps has been sent to the 
frontier, and the Second will follow as soon as his musket 
is repaired." 

This is typical American caricature. The 
caricaturist says the drollest, most incongru- 
ous things, and yet keeps a perfectly straight 
face. 

Mr. Bill Nye and Mr. Mark Twain are 
masters of that quiet, unctious humor which 
.seems to be an indigenous product of the 
country. If either of these men attacks a 
politician's foibles, there is sure to be a 
broad smile throughout the land. 

1 remember having read, several years ago, 
Mr. Bill Nye's caricature of the pomposity 
of certain small officials. 

It was in the form of a letter supposed to 
have been written by one of these small 
officials to the head of the Government. 

Here are some extracts. 



THE CARICATURISTS. 



125 



••Post Office Divan, \ 

Laramie City, W T., Oct. i, 1883- f 
" To THE President of the United States. 

" Sir : I beg leave at this time to officially tender my 
resignation as postmaster at this place, and in due form 
to deliver the great seal and the key to the front door of 
the office. The safe combination is set on the numbers 
33, dd, and 99, though I do not remember at this moment 
which comes first, or how many times you revolve the 
knob, or which direction you should turn it at first, in 
order to make it operate. 

" There is some mining stock in my private drawer in 
the safe, which I have not yet removed. This stock you 
may have, if you desire it. It is a luxury, but you may 
have it. I have decided to keep a horse instead of this 
mining stock. The horse may not be so pretty, but it 
will cost less to keep him. 

"You will find the postal - cards that have not been 
used under the distributing-table, and the coal down in 
the cellar. If the stove draws too hard, close the 
damper in the pipe and shut the general delivery 
window. 

" Looking over my stormy and eventful administration 
as postmaster here, I find abundant cause for thanksgiv- 
ing. At the time I entered upon the duties of my office, 
the department was not yet on a paying basis. It was 
not even self-sustaining. Since that time, with the active 
co-operation of the chief executive and the heads of the 
department, I have been able, to make our postal system 
a paying one, and, on top of that, I am now able to reduce 
the tariff on average-sized letters from 3 cents to 2. I 
might add that this is rather too too, but I will not say 



120 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

anything that might seem undignified in an ofiicial resig- 
nation which is to become a matter of history. 

" Through all the vicissitudes of a tempestuous term of 
office I have safely passed. I am able to turn over the 
office to-day in a highly improved condition, and to pre- 
sent a purified and renovated institution to my successor. 

" Mr. President, I cannot close this letter without 
thanking yourself, and the heads of Departments at Wash- 
ington, for your active, cheery, and prompt co-operation 
in these matters. You can do as you see fit, of course, 
about incorporating this idea into your Thanksgiving proc- 
lamation, but rest assured it would not be ill-timed or 
inopportune. It is not alone a credit to myself : it reflects 
credit upon the Administration also." 

This is a good specimen of the caricature 
of Uncle Sam. You find it in almost all 
the sheets, from Maine to California. The 
American has no bump of respect on his 
cranium. 

He ridicules everybody. 

He feels that all officers of the law are 
elected by him, and he looks upon them as 
creatures of his own. 

Even the Regular Army, which consists of 
some 26,058 men — a compact, effective body 
— is often the subject of laughter. Only a 
short time ago Mr. Henry Guy Carleton, in 
the World, gave a hazardous but witty cari- 
cature of army life. 



THE CARICATURISTS. 



127 



Even the Navy, an eminently conservative 
institution — 89 vessels, tonnage 76,730; 
number .of guns 542 — even this compact, 
aristocratic branch of the public service, is 
the butt of caricature. I found this squib in 
the Hatchet, of Washington, some time ago : 

" Commodore,'^ said Secretary Chandler to Commo- 
dore Walker last Monday evening, '' how many boats 
have we now in the navy ?" 

" Four" replied the commodore. 

" What kind are they ? " inquired the secretary. 

" We have a canoe that is being repaired ; a bateau 
which is also being repaired ; a skiff in good condition, 
and a dugout that has four holes in its bottom." 

" How many guns do they carry ? " continued the 
strong man of the Cabinet. 

" How many what ? " repeated Commodore Walker. 

*' Guns ! " said the Secretary. 

" Guns, guns ! — why, what are guns ? " queried the 
officer. 

" Things that are loaded and go off," replied Mr. 
Chandler. 

" Well, Mr. Secretary," said Commodore Walker, with 
a puzzled expression, " the only things I know of in the 
Navy that get loaded and go off are the officers." Secre- 
tary Chandler discontinued the conversation. 

Mr. Mark Twain is, perhaps, Uncle Sam's 
leading caricaturist. 

His real name is Clemens. 



128 !JOA'. UNCLE SAM. 



He used to be pilot on a Mississippi River 
boat. 

Now he lives in a fine house near Hart- 
ford, rich and dignified. 

You may remember his humorous carica- 
ture-sketch of the duel between M. Gambetta 
and M. de Fourtou. 

Mark Twain, like most of the nephews of 
Uncle Sam, has touched on politics. Did you 
ever read his take-off on the troubles of a 
senatorial private secretary in Washington ? 

" I am not a private secretary to a Senator any more, 
now. I held the berth two months in security and in 
great cheerfulness of spirit, but my bread began to return 
from over the waters, then — that is to say, my works came 
back and revealed themselves. I judged it best to resign. 
The way of it was this. My employer sent, for me one 
morning tolerably early, and as soon as I had finished 
inserting some conundrums clandestinely into his last 
great speech upon finances, I entered the presence. There 
was something portentous in his appearance. His cravat 
was untied, his hair was in a state of disorder, and his 
countenance bore about it the signs of a suppressed storm. 
He held a package of letters in his tense grasp, and I 
knew that the dreaded Pacific mail was in. He said: 

" ' I thought you were worthy of confidence.' 

" I said, * Yes, sir.' 

" He said, 'I gave you a letter from certain of my con- 
stituents in the State of Nevada, asking the establishment 



THE CARICATURISTS. 



129 



of a post-office at Baldwin's Ranche, and told you to 
answer it, as ingeniously as you could, with arguments 
which should persuade them that there was no real neces- 
sity for an office at that place.' 

"■ I felt easier. 'Oh! if that is all, sir, I did do that.' 
" ' Yes, you did. I will read your answer for your own 
humilation.' 

" Washington, November 24. 
" Messrs. Smith, Jones, and Others. 

'■'■ Gentlemeii : What the mischief do you suppose you 
want with a post-office at Baldwin's Ranche ? It would 
not do you any good. If any letters came there you 
couldn't read them, you know ; and besides, such letters 
as ought to pass through, with money in them, for other 
localities, would not be likely to get through, you must 
perceive at once, and that would make trouble for us all. 
No ; don't bother about a post-office in your camp. I 
have your best interests at heart, and feel that it would 
only be an ornamental folly. What you want is a nice 
jail, you know — a nice, substantial jail and a free school. 
These will be a lasting benefit to you ; these will make 
you really contented and happy. I will move in the mat- 
ter at once. 

" Very truly, etc., 

"Mark Twain, 

" For James W. N , U. S. Senator." 

" ' That is the way you answered that letter. Those 
people say they will hang me if ever I enter that district 
again, and I am perfectly satisfied they will, too ! Leave 
the house! Leave it forever and forever, too ! ' 

" I regarded that as a covert intimation that my service 
could be dispensed with, and so I resigned. I never will 
be a private secretary to a Senator again. You can't please 
that kind of people. They don't know anything." 
9 



I30 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



Such, my dear Count, are some of the 
poHtical caricaturists I have found in this 
country. 

They have no Gavarnis, no Chams, here. 

And yet, how gracefully have these cari- 
caturists put cap and bells on the head of 
Uncle Sam ! 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE PREACHERS. 

Men with black frock-coats, white cravats, 
uphfted eyes, men hand in glove with the 
Eternal, have never been wanting on the 
soil of Uncle Sam. 

Though the affairs of Church and the 
affairs of State are supposed to be separate 
here, the preachers who dabble in politics 
have been important factors in the history 
of the country. 

Armed with texts, blessings, anathemas, 
they have, in great national crises, taken 
sides for this party or that, or they have 
been prudently tolerant of both. At all 
times they have been ready to give counsel. 

The politicians, if they do not court the 
preachers, yet are anxious not to offend 
them. 

In the good old days, solemn gentlemen 
like Cotton Mather, Jonathan Mayhew, Ezra 
131 



132 ^/^^'■^■- r.w/./-: sAj/. 

Stiles, seized upon any occasion to lecture 
the people on public affairs. 

Their ideal state was a good theocratic 
bodv. God as ruler, and the elders as minis- 
ters of His will. There was to be liberty, 
but liberty as they understood it. There 
was to be toleration, but toleration of what 
they thought right. 

Episcopalians, Quakers. Catholics, were 
abominations. 

I read recently some of the sermons of 
these solemn political preachers. How dry 
they are, but how interesting and how amus- 
ing, too ! " 

The State, according to these gentlemen, 
was to watch over the daily acts of its 
citizens. 

Crabbed Cotton Mather did not believe in 
drinking cider. 

" Cyder, and a Spirit Extracted out of it, has been 
much abused to Intemperance. Some observe that since 
it has been so, a strange Blast has been upon the fruit 
trees in many Places ; so as that some whose Orchards have 
yielded 500 Barrels of Cyder in a year, now produce very 
little. But there is another sort of Strong Drink imported 
from the Sugar Islands, which has been of all others the 
most fatal. It is now called Rum, but it once had another 
name, and a ridiculous one, viz., A77/ £>e'vi7. Renowned 



THE PREACHERS. 



^Z2> 



Mr. Wilson said it would rather have been called Kill 
Me?i for the Detnl. 

And in another of Mather's sermons, he 
laments over " that worse than brutish sin 
of drunkenness, which has become a pre- 
vailing Iniquity all over the Countrey . . . 
How has M^inc and Cyder, but most of all 
Rimz, debauched multitudes of People, Young 
and Old!" 

Traces of this prohibitory, puritanic spirit, 
in spite of the influence of Germans and 
Irish, are still rife on the soil of Uncle Sam. 

Indeed, the prohibition movement here is 
a growing movement. Even in the State of 
New York Prohibitionists have been steadily 
gaining. Their vote in 1883 was 19.000; in 
1884,25,000; nearly 31,000 in 1885 ; and over 
36,000 in 1886. 

John Calvin, who had dyspepsia, and John 
Knox, who had the spleen, were the models 
of the old political preachers of Uncle Sam. 
Their sermons were over an hour long. They 
preached three times of a Sunday. They 
preached, I know not how often, during the 
week. 

"To be brief, I remark, eighteenthly," one 
of them would say. 



134 f^ON. UNCLE SAM. 

The sexton of the church had a kind of 
rod, to keep awake such of the congregation 
as fell asleep. 

The preachers interfered in everything, 
from the election of a Governor to the estab- 
lishment of a dancing-school. 

Dr. John Witherspoon, who was President 
of Princeton College, and a signer of the 
Declaration of Independence, wrote a big 
book against stage-players. 

In 1684 Mr. Francis Stepney set up a dan- 
cing-school in Boston. The ministers became 
alarmed. They issued a tract : 

" An Arrow against Profane and Promis- 
cuous Dancing, Drawn out of the Quiver of 
the Scriptures " (the title bearing the motto 
of "The Dance is a Circle whose Centre is 
the Devil "), and in this they informed their 
fellow-townsmen that "such Church-mem- 
bers in N. E. as have sent their children to 
be Practitioners or Spectators of mixt Dan- 
cing between Young Men and Maidens, have 
cause to be deeply humbled." " But stand 
still a while! What a word is here ! Church- 
members and their children in New Eng- 
land at mixt Dances ! Be astonished, O 
ye heavens ! without doubt, Abraham is 



THE PREACHERS. 



135 



ignorant of us, and Israel knoweth us 
not !" 

One minister objected to long hair, as 
" contrary to the word of God, and to na- 
ture, and shamefuU." 

Another minister found fault with " Hoop- 
ed Petticoats," as " contrary to the Light of 
Nature." 

A third minister, intent on the public good, 
declaimed against the tendency of men " to 
set their Dwelling Houses at such a Distance 
from the Place of Worship that they and 
their families cannot well attend it." 

The clergymen of Uncle Sam have kept 
up their love of interference in the private 
lives of candidates for office, and of politi- 
cians in office. They constitute themselves 
the censors of public and private morals. 

Take the Jackson-Eaton affair: 

When Jackson became President, he chose 
as one of his Cabinet Senator Eaton, of Ten- 
nessee. This Senator had as a wife a very 
pretty woman. Both Jackson and Eaton 
had known her as Peg O'Neil, the daughter 
of a tavern-keeper, William O'Neil. She had 
served them drinks many a time in her fa- 
ther's hostelry in Washington. 



136 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

And now she was suddenly raised to social 
prominence ! 

Highbred ladies turned up their noses at 
the Cabinet officer's wife. 

All kinds of rumors were afloat. Peg had 
been a bad girl. Peg had done this. Peg 
had done that. Jackson had had relations 
with Peg. Eaton, before marriage, had had 
relations with Peg. 

Who do you suppose aided the prudish 
ladies of Washington in the diffusion of these 
rumors ? Who do you suppose delighted to 
dissect the character of Mrs. Eaton, n6e Peg 
O'Neil, and whisper suggestive gossip about 
her? 

The clergy ! 

Dr. Ely, of Philadelphia, took upon him- 
self to write a long letter on the sub- 
ject of the woman's honor to President 
Jackson. 

President Jackson wrote an elaborate de- 
fense of his Cabinet officer's wife in reply. 

Dr. Ely wrote another letter — asked for 
further particulars — expressed himself as un- 
satisfied. 

President Jackson replied in more forcible, 
more lengthy, terms. 



THE PREACHtlRS. 



^n 



You must read that correspondence. It is 
like a bit of comedy. 

Now, just as Dr. Ely interested himself in 
the love affairs of P^resident Jackson, so dur- 
ing the last campaign Dr. Ball, of Buffalo, 
interested himself in the private affairs of 
President Cleveland. 

fie communicated to the Republican Com- 
mittee a detailed and highly flavored account 
of Cleveland's ante-martial adventures, and 
the committee set to work and flooded the 
land with pamphlets giving an account of 
this affair. 

Editors discussed the matter in the papers; 
preachers spoke of it in the pulpit. 

Rev. Dr. Ball had done his duty well. 

During the anti-slavery struggle the clergy 
were divided in sentiment. 

The preachers of the South were almost 
without exception for slavery. Bishop Polk, 
of Louisiana, considered it a divine institu- 
tion. Were not the patriarchs and the proph- 
ets slave-holders ? 

Throughout the Northern States, most of 
the clergy was perplexed, and sought to 
avoid a break with the South on the issue. 

Dr. Lord, of Dartmouth College, made 



138 HON. UXCl.E SAM. 

some allusion to the curse the Lord had 
heaped on the children of Ham. The slav- 
ery of the Black Race, according to him, 
was therefore a decreed and foreordained 
fact. 

Dr. Thayer, of Yale College, considered 
it lawful to deliver up slaves for "the high, 
the great, the momentous, interests of the 
Southern States." 

Dr. Orville Dewey declared that he would 
rather " send his own brother and child into 
slavery " than hurt the Union. 

Dr. Moses Stuart, of the Andover Theo- 
logical Seminary, thanked Webster for his 
advocacy of the Fugitive-Slave Law. 

But there were powerful dissenting voices 
among the clergy of the North. 

William Ellery Channing was pronounced 
against all dalliance with what Sumner called 
the harlot slavery. 

Many clergymen of New Eagland sent 
petitions against human bondage to Con- 
gress. Senator Douglass, of Illinois, in open 
Senate, called the petitioners profoundly 
ignorant men. 

Senator Mason, of \^irginia, oppose them 
and called them arroo^ant men. 



THE rREACHERS. 



139 



"There hang beside me in my study as I write," said 
Theodore Parker to Millard Fillmore, in 1850, anent the 
Fugitive-Slave Law, " the gun my grandfather fought with 
at the battle of Lexington — and he was a captain on the 
occasion — and also the musket he captured from a British 
soldier on that day ; the first taken in the war for inde- 
pendence. If I would not peril my i)roperty, my liberty, 
nay, my life, to keep my own parishioners out of slavery, 
I would throw away these trophies, and should think I was 
the son of some coward, and not a brave man's child." 

Such was the spirit of Theodore Parker. 

Such was the spirit also of Henry Ward 
Beecher, son of Lyman Beecher, for thirty 
years the head of Plymouth Church, in 
Brooklyn. 

There are very few political issues of Un- 
cle Sam that Beecher has not treated. Ques- 
tions the most diverse — slavery, union, 
currency, local reforms, national elections, 
continental wars, and revolutions — the big, 
plethoric, eloquent man has essayed them all. 

Beecher had a salary of $50,000 a year, and 
he deserved it. 

He was one of the first preachers here to 
do away with uniform and pompous solem- 
nity in sermons. 

" I think, ' said he, "that the minister of 
God has carte-blanche liberty to touch man's 



I40 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



mirthfulness. ... I regard all this supersti- 
tious, unsmiling Christianity as a relic of the 
old Vandal times." 

His sermons were always full of points. 

" I think mobs are God's providential 
asses," he said in 1S59, on the eve of the 
great war, "which he makes harrow up the 
ground in time for seed-sowing. I am sorry 
for any State that never had any mobs." 

Optimistic as regards his country's future, 
especially as he grew old, Beecher ever had 
a quiet, sarcastic tone when speaking of pol- 
iticians. 

" I think I can show ambitious men who seek political 
preferments their types on the seashore. There you will 
see old worthless sticks of drift-wood come rolling in on 
the crest of some wave: these are now the types of political 
men coming into power. In the course of a year or so 
they are sucked out into the sea again by the ebbing and 
flowing of the tide: then they are types of political men 
going out of power; and whether coming in or going out, 
they are merely old, decayed water logs, which are fit for 
nothing, not even to be burned." 

During the last Presidential campaign, 
Beecher, an old Republican, the friend of 
Lincoln, Grant, Arthur, declared for Cleve- 
land. 



THE PREACHERS. \^\ 

You ought to have heard the howl of the 
Republicans against him ! 

They raked up the old history of his sup- 
posed intimacy with Mrs. Tilton. 

They accused him of sympathizing with 
Cleveland because of Cleveland's ante- 
marital affairs. 

They ridiculed him as a dotard. 

Whatever may have been said against 
him, or may be said against him, Beecher 
was a great orator. 

It was one of his theories that no man 
could be a great orator who hadn't body and 
belly. He assuredly had plenty of both. 

So had Gambetta. 

Dr. Talmage, of Brooklyn, has not much 
body, but he has much mouth. The carica- 
turists love to draw that mouth. It goes 
from ear to ear. 

Dr. Talmage is a sensationalist, a circus- 
man in the pulpit. 

He is a typical preacher of Uncle Sam — 
vulgar, humorous, pithy, pungent. He said, 
on a Fourth of July, a short time ago : 

"If heart and liver are all right, everything is right. Some 
people fear that the new political theories promise trouble. 
'I'hat is no such thing. It isn't what a man has, but what 



142 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



a man is that decides matters. It is impossible to divide 
happiness evenly. The happiest people in the world are 
the old apple-stand women. Many people don't seem to 
be satisfied with America. Why don't they leave ? The 
United States is the greatest country in the world. They 
talk about the dissipation of to-day. Look at the ancient 
sideboard, fashionable when the most sober of men used 
to take a day to themselves. Compare the courtships of 
to-day with those of a hundred years ago. Oh my ! Then 
talk about the corruption of the age. Why, sixty years 
ago the Governor of New York was compelled to disband 
the Legislature on account of its corruption ! Think of 
Aaron Burr coming within a vote of the* Presidency ! 
Society was so much worse, than it is to-day, a hundred 
years ago, that I can't understand how the fathers and 
mothers of that time could be induced to stay in it. Still, 
I am glad, for the sake of the present generation, that 
they did stay. 

" The United States is the greatest country in the world 
in which to live, and millions are yearly discovering the 
fact. If a man has weak lungs, he can go South ; if he 
wants a more bracing atmosphere, he can come North; if 
he feels crowded, he can go West; if he wants an expla- 
nation of matters beyond our understanding, a call can be 
made on the philosophers of Boston. Is there room for 
many more millions of people ? Those who asked the 
question have never been to Texas. America is the Lord's 
darling." 

That is Dr. Talmage's style. 
That, too, in a measure, is the style of 
Joseph Cook, of Boston ; of Robert Coll- 



THE PREACHERS. 



143 



yer, of Sam Small, of David Swing, of Chi- 
cago. 

These preachers touch on politics when- 
ever they see fit. 

Dr. Newman, who was a kind of court 
chaplain to President Grant, habitually sniv- 
els in politics. 

He recently received a check for $1,000 
from Senator Stanford, of California, for de- 
livering a eulogy on his son. 

He deserved the check. 

He compared the young man to Christ. 

The proceedings in both the Senate and 
the House are opened each day by chaplains 
who receive handsome salaries. 

In their prayers they consult and argue 
with God on national politics. 

The country abounds, also, in army chap- 
lains and preachers. 

They keep up the old war ardor more than 
the regular soldiers. 

If there is a good warlike text in the 
Old Testament, these preachers of the gos- 
pel of peace and good -will of the New 
Testament are sure to find it, and sure to 
use it. 

I was much surprised to find Rabbi Gott- 



144 



JWX. UA'CLE SAM. 



heil. head of the richest congregation of Jews 
in America, advocate female suffrage. 

In Wyoming and Washington Territories 
women enjoy full franchise. 

In Kansas they are allowed to vote in 
municipal elections. 

In Massachusetts and Vermont, female 
suffrage has many advocates. 

But that Rev. Dr. Gottheil should cham- 
pion the political cause of the ladies — well, 
I can't understand it. 

It is interesting to study the attitude of 
the clergy of the Catholic Church toward 
the politics of Uncle Sam. 

It is a cautious policy. 

The Church does not push itself into the 
foreeround. It works in the dark 

The Church has increased its influence to 
such an extent that it can afford to wait. 

Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore, asked 
for his opinion on the relations between 
capital and labor, a short time ago, answered 
vaguelv that those problems could be 
solved by either party adhering to the 
maxim oi Christ : " Whatsoever ye would 
that men should do to you. do ye also to 
them ! " 



THE PREACIIRRS. 



45 



Archbishop Corrigan, of New York, mixes 
in local politics, but in an underhand way. 

The priests of the diocese have their orders 
how they are to instruct the faithful to vote. 

Most of the priests are mere puppets in 
politics, moved by archiepiscopal hands. 

Dr. McGlynn, late of St. Stephens, New 
York, is an exception. 

He espoused Mr. Henry George s land 
theories a few years ago, and advocated 
Henry George for Mayor. 

Archbishop Corrigan told him to desist, 
but Dr. McGlynn would not desist. Then 
Archbishop Corrigan suspended Father Mc- 
Glynn from his functions at St. Stephens, 
and he was ordered to Rome within forty 
days. 

Father McGlynn refused. 

"I am a Catholic," said he, " but I am also 
an American. The Pope can dictate to me 
in matters of religion ; he cannot dictate to 
me ip matters of poHtics." 

Thereupon the Pope sent the thunder of 
excommunication to Archbishop Corrigan 
across the sea by steamer, and Archbishop 
Corrigan sent them to Father McGlynn in a 
registered letter. 



146 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

On the evening of that day the priest made 
a violent speech. 

He told some interesting political secrets. 

He affirmed that the Archbishop and 
clergy of New York opposed Cleveland 
during the last Presidential campaign be- 
cause Cleveland, when Governor, had ve- 
toed an appropriation of $25,000 for a Cath- 
olic Protectory. He stated that it was moot- 
ed in ecclesiastical circles to have a repre- 
sentative of Rome at Washington. Then 
Dr. McGlynn said these bold words : 

" As long as the Catholic people give the Pope to un- 
derstand that he can do as he pleases, interfere in politics, 
allow cardinals and bishops and priests to be elected mem- 
bers of the French Assembly, and permit her Archbishop 
to say to an American citizen that he must not dare to 
make a platform speech of any character whatever [tre- 
mendous applause], or to attend any political meeting 
whatever in the future, without the permission of the Sa- 
cred Congregation of the Propaganda — an Italian institu- 
tion some 15,000 miles away ; governed by men who do 
not know but that Florida is a suburb of New York, and 
Mobile the name of a street in San Francisco — I say, as 
long as Catholic people of Ireland and America will per- 
mit the Roman machine, of which the Pope is a mere pup- 
pet [Dr. McGlynn pronounced the word savagely], to do 
all this, so long will the Roman machine continue to use 
poor Paddy and the poor Polish fool as so many pawns 



THE PREACHERS. 



147 



upon their horrid chess-boards, to be sold at any time for 
what they can get in return. The whole of this policy is 
largely instigated by insane lust on the one hand, and hope 
for the restoration of the Pope's rotten old temporal throne, 
that everyone knows to be as dead as Julius Caesar." 

However this Dr. McGlynn - Leo XIII. 
affair may end, it is a noteworthy inci- 
dent in the history of the pohtics of Uncle 
Sam. Here w^ have a priest who wishes to 
be a politician. Father McGlynn, after al], 
is doing- openly what many preachers of the 
Church of Rome before him have done in a 
covert manner. 

He is speaking as openly on politics as the 
preachers of all the churches of Protestantism 
are wont to do. 

Orators of the pulpit like Heber Newton, 
Phillips Brooks, Dr. Storrs, Dr. Chapin, Dr. 
Hall, have never allowed great political ques- 
tions to pass them by unnoticed. 

During the last campaign Mr. Blaine tried 
to get the clergy over on his side. The man 
from Maine held a reception of reverend 
gentlemen, attired in clerical black himself, 
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. 

It was just on the eve of the New York 
election. 



148 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Many speeches were made, all compli- 
mentary of Mr. Blaine, and the meeting was 
being pronounced a great success. 

Suddenly a contretemps, an accident, oc- 
curred. 

Rev. Dr. Burchard, an ardent friend of Mr. 
Blaine, in the course of his remarks, made 
an unfortunate alliteration. 

He alluded to the Democratic party as 
the party of " Rum, Romanism, and Rebel- 
lion." 

The remark was telegraphed all over the 
country, and created a sensation. 

Many Irishmen, who would probably have 
voted for Blaine, felt themselves touched by 
the alliteration of Rev. Dr. Burchard, and 
voted against the man from Maine. 

Mr. Blaine subsequently claimed that that 
sentence had lost him the election. 

Thus the clergy are often most injudicious 
friends of the politicians. 

Some of the clergy are sTirewd enough to 
see that the politicians use them merely to 
catch votes before an election, and then turn 
their backs on them afterward. 

Beecher once illustrated this by an anec- 
dote. Said he : 



THE PREACHERS. 1 49 

" Do not trust the politicians, when they suddenly con- 
fess to have been converted to the principles of godliness 
or to your political views. Especially do not believe 
them when they make such a confession just before 
an election. It takes long to be converted. They are 
hardly ever converted when they say they are. I remem- 
ber that there was, in a certain parish on the Hudson 
River, a very pious clergyman, who had in his parish two 
confirmed sinners. The one was a confirmed liar, and the 
other was a confirmed stutterer. Now the pious clergyman 
preached so long and so ardently that these two sinners 
saw the error of their ways, came to him, and asked to be 
baptized. The clergyman was delighted, and requested 
them to accompany him to the river. 

" It was winter, and the Hudson was frozen thick. So 
the clergyman took an axe and chopped a cubic hole into 
the river. Then he took the confirmed liar, and he ducked 
him once, and he ducked him twice, and he ducked him 
thrice. 

" ' Are you cold.'' ' asked the clergyman, sympathetically. 

"'Why, no,' promptly, chatteringly, replied the con- 
firmed liar. ' Cold ! Not at all. Never felt so comfortable 
in all my life ! ' 

" Then the confirmed stutterer advanced and said : 

" ' Mr-Mr-Mi-Minister, d-d-duck h-him a-a-ag-again — 
d-d-d-duck him a-a-ag-ag-again-ain. H-he-he's n-not 
c-con-convert-convert-converted yet ! ' 

" My friends, before you believe m the professions, in 
the promises, of a politician — before an election — duck 
him again and again ! The chances are that you will find 
out too late that, like the confirmed liar, ' he isn't con- 
verted yet ! ' " 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE POETS. 

Poets and politicians do not, as a general 
thing, get along well together. 

Thiers, when voting in the Academy, 
would always vote in just the opposite way 
to Victor Hugo. 

"If he votes aye," he used to say, " I vote 
nay. I will then be right.' 

The practical politicians of Uncle Sam 
have little use for the poets. 

Roscoe Conkling, of New York, tall, ath- 
letic, puffy, with a massive head and a curl 
artistically arranged on his brow, was rhetor- 
ical in his speech, but practical in his methods. 

On one occasion when Senator Sumner, as 
was his wont, quoted the poets, Conkling 
impatiently remarked to Senator Carpenter, 
of Wisconsin : 

" He builds his arguments with vapor in- 
stead of cement." 



THE POETS. 



151 



And yet most of the poets of Uncle Sam 
have taken interest in his poHtics. 

It seems strange, but it is so. 

Though poHtics and poesy are realms 
which seem so wide apart that the Hege sub- 
jects of the one would scarce be expected to 
have aught to do with those of the other, we 
yet find that from the day of Alcaeus and 
Pindar to the day of Tennyson and Hugo, 
poets have not disdained to throw them- 
selves into the political combats of their 
time in order to aid with their verse and 
their name an idea or a cause which they 
held dear. 

The poets of Uncle Sam have proved no 
exception to this rule. 

Few of them have not deserved the eulogy 
v^hich Hale pronounced on Holmes : 

" When the war cloud lowers 
Above the lands, 
The poet stands 
And tells the coward how to try, 
And tells the bravest how to die. 
Tyrtseus cheers his boys and ours." 

Few of them would not act as Milton did. 

" When I was preparing to pass over into 

Sicily and Greece," said he, " the melancholy 



1:^2 J^OX. rXCLE SAM. 

intelligence which 1 received of the civil 
coniniotions in Enoland made me alter my 
purpose ; for 1 thought it base to be travel- 
ing- abroad, while niv fellow-citizens were 
fighting- for liberty at home." 

There was but one of the poets of Uncle 
Sam who may be called indifferent to what 
went on around him. 

That was Edgar Allen Poe. 

He didn't care about the Republic any 
more than Charles Baudelaire with us cared 
about the Empire. 

There have been no court sycophants in 
this country like Racine. Boileau. Le Brun, 
with us. 

Not one of the poets of Uncle Sam, like 
Edmund Waller, composed a eulogistic ode, 
first to a Cromwell, and then wrote one 
equally laudatory to a Charles II. You re- 
member the anecdote that comes in here. 
The monarch preferred the ode written in 
honor of the usurper to the one written in his 
own. and told the poet so. 

•' Poets, sire." answered Waller, cynically, 
wittily. " succeed better in fiction than in 
truth." 

The poets of Uncle Sam may be more sin- 



THE /'OI'/J'S. 



53 



cere in their praises, but could one of them 
have made that remark ? 

I will not weary you with a list of the 
early political poets of Uncle Sam. 

In fact, I am afraid I bore you quite too 
often. 

I sometimes think 1 hear you yawn across 
the ocean. 

I overload these letters, I fear, with dry 
facts, bare statistics, empty names. 

You will, I am afraid, consider me quite a 
pedant. 

But remember, my dear Count, that I have 
long been an enforced exile in dreary Wash- 
ington, that I do all this to fulfill a promise 
and pass the time, and that the environment 
has its influence. 

I will not speak of the early poets. 

Pope, who was the author most imitated 
by these ambitious patriots, would assured- 
ly have enrolled them in his " Dunciad " 
that scroll of stupidity. 

We are told that, when a mere boy, 
William Cullen Bryant wrote the following 
bitter verses on Thomas Jefferson : 

" And thou, the scorn of every patriot name, 
Thy country's ruin and her council's shame. 



154 fiON. UNCLE SAM. 

Poor servile thing ! Derision of the brave ! 

Go span, philosophist, thy Sally's charms, 
And sink supinely in her sable arms, 

But quit to abler hands the helm of state. 
Nor image ruin on thy country's fate ! " 

We know that when the South fired on 
Fort Sumter in 1861, Bryant, the man, was 
ready with pen, purse, and verse. 

' Lay down the axe, fling by the spade, 
Leave in the track the toiling plow. 
The rifle and the bayonet blade 
For arms like yours were fitter now ! 

" And let the hands that ply the pen 
Quit the light task and learn to wield 

The horseman's crooked brand, and rein 
The charger on the battle-field. 

''Our Country calls : away, away ! 
To where the blood stream blots the green. 

Strike to defend the gentlest sway 
That Time in all his course has seen. 

" See, from a thousand coverts, see, 
Spring the armed foes that haunt the track; 

They rush to smite her down, and we 
Must beat the banded traitors back." 

Longfellow, who was above all a scholar, 
and cared little for the crush and rush of 
active life, even this quiet student poet of 



THE POETS. 



155 



Cambridge-on-Charles was alive to his coun- 
try's welfare. Not to speak of the national 
bearing of such poems as " Evangeline," 
" Miles Standish," and " Paul Revere's Ride," 
not to mention the notes of warning in his 
" Poems on Slavery," I would quote from his 
*' Building of the Ship " such words as these : 

" Thou, too, sail on, O ship of state ! 
Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 
Humanity, with all its fears. 
With all the hopes of future years, 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 

'' In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
In spite of false lights on the shore, 

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. 

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, . 

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 

Are all with thee — are all with thee! " 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the philosopher, 
was not so far lost in the clouds of his tran- 
scendental system as not to occasionally 
write poetry on politics. His ode at Con- 
cord, in 1857, and his ode at Boston, in 1873, 
would perhaps be intelligible to the few 
His lines captioned " Politics " would most 
assuredly not be so to the many. 



156 If ON. INCLE SAM. 

" Gold and iron are good, 

To buy iron and gold. 
All earth's fleece and food, 

For their like are sold. 

*' Fear, Craft and Avarice 
Cannot rear a State. 

When the Muses nine 

With the Virtues meet, 
Find to their designs 

n Atlantic seat. 
By green orchard boughs, 

Fended from the heat. 
When the statesman ploughs 

Furrows for the wheat — 
When the Church is social worth, 

When the State House is the hearth, 
Then the perfect State is come. 

The republican at home " 

Do you understand what he is driving at? 

I do not. 

I Hke the poem by John Boyle O'Reilly, 
entitled " America," better than any po- 
litical poem from the pen of Waldo Em- 
erson. 

John Greenleaf Whittier is of the people 
and for the people. Simple in his tastes, 
with much ardor and little imagination, with 
scant learning, but a good command of me- 



THE POETS. 



157 



tre, Whittier was the typical champion of 
freedom, earnest, big-fisted. 

How bitterly, sarcastically, Whittier wrote 
in the old black slavery days ! 

" Have ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain and glen, 
Through canebrake and forest — the hunting of men ? 
The lords of our land to this hunting have gone, 
As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn; 
Hark ! — the cheer and the halloo ! — the crack of the 

whip, 
And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip ! 
AH blithe are our hunters, and noble their match, 
Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch. 
So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain and glen, 
Through canebrake and forest — the hunting of men !" 

No wonder the men who hunted runaway 
slaves didn't like Whittier ! No wonder they 
stopped the sale of his works in the South ! 

" As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn, 

Hark ! the cheer and the halloo ! the crack of the whip, 
And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip ! 
All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match- 
Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch. 
So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain and glen, 
Through canebrake and forest — the hunting of men ! " 

Wendell Holmes puts into his verse much 
of the waggery, the grace, the wit of Beranger. 



158 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Though he at certain points gives you 
an impression of being a dilettante, he is 
generally heart and soul in his work. He 
passes with wonderful nimbleness from gay 
to grave. 

You would hardly think that a man who 
writes such couplets as : 

" Now then, nine cheers for the stay-at-home ranger ! 
Blow the great fish-horn and beat the big pan ! 
First in the field that is furthest from danger, 

Take your white feather plume, sweet little man !" 

could write a stanza like this : 

" When our land is illumined with Liberty's smile, 

If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory, 

Down, down with the traitor that dares to defile 

The flag of her stars and the page of her glory ! 
By millions unchained when our birthright was gained 
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained ! 
And the Star Spangled Banner, in triumph shall wave, 
While the land of the free is the home of the brave !" 

James Russell Lowell, who was once a pro- 
fessor at Harvard College, and lately acted 
as Minister at the Court of St. James, has 
always mingled his politics and his poesy 
like the majority of his countrymen mix 
their drinks. 

When quite a young man he wrote, in a 



THE POETS. 



59 



barbarous dialect, the " Biglow Papers " 
against the war with Mexico. When in mid' 
die age, during the rebellion, he composed 
the scholastic " Harvard Ode," in honor of 
the students who had fallen in the war. 
About ten years ago he composed the fol- 
lowing characteristic poem on the general 
corruption of his country's politics : 

" But now that ' Statesmanship ' is just a way 
To dodge the primal curse and make it pay; 
Since Office means a kind of patent drill 
To force an entrance on the Nation's till, 
And peculation something rather less 
Risky than if you spelt it with an S ; 
Now that to steal by law is grown an art, , 
Whom rogues the sires their milder sons call smart, 
And ' slightly irregular ' dilutes the shame 
Of what had once a somewhat blunter name; 
With generous curve we draw the moral line; 
Our swindlers are permitted to resign; 
Their guilt is wrapped in deferential names, 
And twenty sympathize for one that blames, 
Add national disgrace to private crime, 
Confront mankind with brazen front sublime. 

' Steal but enough, the world is unsevere, 
Tweed is a statesman, Fisk a financier; 
Invent a mine to be — the Lord knows what, 
Secure at any rate, with what you've got. 
The public servant who has stolen or lied, 
If called on, may resign with honest pride; 



l6o HON. UNCLE SAM. 

As unjust favor put him in, why doubt 
Disfavor as unjust has turned him out ? 
Even if indicted, what is that but fudge 
To him who counted in the elective judge ? 
Whitewashed, he quits the politicians' strife, 
At ease in mind, with pockets filled for life: 
His lady glares with gems, whose vulgar blaze 
The poor man through his heightened taxes pays. 
Himself content if one huge Kohinoor 
Bulge from a shirt-front ampler than before.*' 

Mr. Conkling", of whom I spoke, was, by 
the way, a bitter opponent of Mr. Blaine. 

They had had a debate in the Senate one 
day, and. in the heat of discussion, trans- 
gressed the rules of parliamentary decorum. 

Mr. Blaine applied the term "turkey gob- 
bler" to Mr. Conkling. 

And the pompous Mr. Conkling, when 
asked to speak in behalf of Mr. Blaine dur- 
ing the last Presidential campaign, answered, 
curtly : 

" No, thanks ; I am not in criminal prac- 
tice." 

Mr. Conkling always considered Mr. Blaine 
a corrupt man. 

Walt Whitman is by some considered the 
typical poet-politician of America. 

He was something or other in the late war, 



THE POETS. l6l 

and his verse in "Blades of Grass" and 
" Drum Taps" is as rugged as a jog over 
a stubble - field, as hearty as a trooper's 
oath. 

When Grant died, Whitman was sorely 
grieved. 

He took a long pull of whisky in his coun- 
try hut in New Jersey, and, of course, wrote 
a soruict. This is the way it runs : 

• As one- by one withdraw the lofty actors, 

From that great play on history's stage eterne, 

That lurid, partial act of war and peace — of old and new 

contending ; 
Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many 

a long suspense ; 
All past — and since, in countless graves receding, mellow- 
ing, 
Victors and vanquished — Lincoln's and Lee's — now thou 

with them, 
Man of the mighty days — and equal to the days I 
Thou from the prairies ! — tangled and many-veined and 

hard has been thy part. 
To admiration has it been enacted." 

There is a fellow who could never get into 
our Academy. 

Our green-coated word dilettantes would 
never tolerate so radical a word-builder. 

The Civil War, of course, called forth great 



1 62 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

numbers of political poets in both the Fed- 
eral and Confederate camps. 

Most of them wrote fudge. A few go to 
the heart. 

There is the jaunty, dashing rhyme, " The 
Seventh," by Fitz-James O'Brien. 

" Och, we're the boys, 

That hearts desthroys 
Wid making love and fighting ; 

We take a fort, 
The girls we court, 

But most the last delight in. 
To fire a gun 

Or raise some fun, 
To us is no endeavor ; 

So let us hear 
One hearty cheer — 

The Seventh's lads forever ! " 

There is the plain, determined " Soldiers' 
Talk " of Charles J. Halpm. 

** The negro — free or slave — 

We care no pin about. 
But for the flag our father's gave 

We mean to fight it out ; 
And while that banner brave 

One rebel rag shall flout, 
With volleying arm and clashing glaive 

By Heaven ! we fight it out ! 



THE POETS. 163 

** Oh, we've heard the rebel yell, 

We have heard the Union shout, 
We have weighed the matter very well, 

And mean to fight it out. 
In the flush of perfect triumph, 

And the gloom of utter rout, 
We have sworn on many a bloody field, 

We mean to fight it out." 

Both O'Brien and Halpin died in the ranks 
which they did so much to keep at battle- 
pitch with their rhymes. 

" I never heard the old song of 'Percy and 
Douglas,' " wrote Sir Philip Sidney, " that I 
found not my heart more moved than with 
a trumpet." 

I confess that I am often stirred just that 
way, when we hear some of these songs. 

Read over " Sheridan's Ride," by Bu- 
chanan Reid, and your pulse will beat 
faster. 

And when I wander among the graves in 
the cemetery at Arlington, the dome of the 
Capitol at Washington in the distance, the 
setting sun sending its last rays upon me, 
I repeat to myself that most beautiful 
of martial elegies, the one by Theodore 
O'Hara : 



164 I^ON. UNCLE SAM 

" The muffled drum's sad roll has beat 

The soldier's last tattoo ; 
No more on life's parade shall meet 

That brave and fallen few. 
On Fame's eternal camping ground 

Their silent tents are spread, 
And glory guards, with solemn round, 

The bivouac of the dead !" 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE DIPLOMATS. 

It was Sir Henry Wotton, I believe, who 
defined a diplomat as a man sent by his coun- 
try to lie abroad. 

The definition was as just as it was witty, 
and holds good for the gentlemen of the 
diplomatic service of Uncle Sam. 

They have no schools of diplomacy in this 
country as they have in Europe. There is 
no fixed diplomatic service as with us. Men 
are appointed to fill foreign posts by reason 
of political service to the President and the 
party in power, with little regard to anterior 
training, actual fitness, or ultimate usefulness. 
That accounts for the presence on the Conti- 
nent of so many colonels, majors, generals, 
captains, so-called, who do not speak our 
language and who know so little of our his- 
tory and people. 

** Can you teach ? " asks the Grande Duch- 
esse in the operette. 

165 



l66 ffON. UNCLE SAM. 

" No," answers Fritz ; " 1 go to learn ! " 

After the diplomats of Uncle Sam have 
learned their French, it sounds something 
like the jumble overheard by Mr. Grenville- 
Murray in the diplomatic gallery of the 
Flouse of Commons during a debate. 

" C'est un grand pays qui produit de telles 
jeunes gens," remarked the French Ambas- 
sador, shutting up his glasses and addressing 
his American colleague. 

" L'Angletaire ne produce pas boccoo de 
ce joon gens," answered the American, in an 
oracular way. 

But, in critical moments, the diplomats of 
Uncle Sam have done even better than our 
trained men. 

Take Franklin, the man sent by the colo- 
nies to negotiate the alliance with France in 
1778, and you have a born diplomat. Have 
you ever read the note which he wrote to a 
certain nobleman in 1 768 when in London ? 

" Dr. Franklin presents his respectful compliments to 
Lord Bathurst with some American nuts ; and to Lady 
Bathurst with some American apples : which he prays they 
will accept as a tribute from that country, small, indeed, 
but voluntary." 

What politeness ! What tact . 



THE DIPLOMATS. i^y 

The tallow-chandler's son from Pennsyl- 
vania held his own with the powdered states- 
men of Versailles. 

He never spoke a word too soon, says the 
historian Bancroft, he never spoke a word 
too late : he always spoke the right word in 
the right place. 

His conduct in Paris, said our philosopher, 
Cabanis, of him, was a chef d'oeuvre. 

Franklin did indeed snatch the lightning 
from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants. 

Passing from Franklin to Jefferson, we 
find the same tact, the same politeness, the 
same diplomatic shrewdness. The man from 
Virginia made a hit at the very start, and he 
made it with a witticism. 

" Ah, you are sent to replace M. Franklin !" 
said Vergennes to him, as he presented his 
credentials. 

" Pardon me," promptly replied Jefferson, 
bowing low, " I come to succeed M. Franklin. 
No one can replace him !" 

And yet the history of the diplomacy of 
Uncle Sam is not as full of bright sayings, 
apt repartee, telling wit, as that of France. 

They lack the polish of refined society, the 
diplomats of this Republic ; the politeness 



i68 M)-\-. r.vci/-: sam 

brod o( ancient tradition and rctincd asso- 
ciation. 

When M. de Bacourt was over here in 
Washington as Minister Plenipotentiary of 
Louis IMiillipe in the time ot" President Tvler. 
he wrote thus of a dinner ^iven at the White 
I louse : 

•• Forty men wore present, but no women ; the latter 
did not appear till after dinner. I was seated between Mr. 
Spencer and Mr. Webster. The latter threw off the psendo- 
dignity in which he constantly clothes his sad mediocrity ; 
the Madeira, ot" which he drank too much, not only ren- 
dered him agreeable, in the American fashion that is to 
say, but caused him to become maudlin ; he clasped my 
arm with both hands and said : ' My dear l^acourt, I am 
exceedingly pleased to see you to-night ; I feel this 
much more than 1 have previously done, though 1 cannot 
tell why. Perhaps 1 have not hitherto been friendly enough 
toward you, but if you will allow me, we shall now become 
a pair of friends : you shall see that 1 am a good fellow. 
Come and see medaily without ceremony ; that will please 
me greatly, my dear Bacourt, because 1 really tind you 
charming." This flattering avowal was made in halting- 
phrase, and, I must tell you, with hiccups, which rendered 
the neighborhood of the Secretary of State anything but 
pleasant. All this occurred at the table of the head of 
the State at a dinner given to the representatives oi all the 
European powers." 

Thiiios have ehanoed sorne in this respect, 
hut tile nianners oi the diplomats of I'ncle 



THE D/rj.OMATS. i5q 

Sam arc still stam[)cd with a kind of vulgar 
disregard (jf foreign customs. 

They used to laughingly speak at Secre- 
tary Frelinghuysen's table of a certain con- 
sul who, on meeting the son of the Prince 
of Wales, slapped him familiarly on the 
i)ack and said : 

" 1 am glad to see you, my boy, I've 
heard of your grandmother. She's a good 
queen, and, no doubt, a good grandmother. 
Glad to see you !" 

What a contrast between the boorish 
bluntness of Uncle Sam and the deferential 
politeness of Prince GortschakofT ! Lord 
Duflferin having asked him one day whether 
the rimperor's cold was better, was rather 
startled, we are told, to hear him answer, in 
a reverent voice, with his head bent and his 
eyes half closed: 

*• His Majesty has deigned to feel a little 
better this morning!" 

I said that the diplomats from here are not 
a«i witty as those abroad. Point out to me 
in their history such apt replies as you find 
in that of ICngland and TVance. 

When Frederick the Great said spitefully 
to Minister Elliot, on the occasion of the 



I/O 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



Te Deums over the reverses of Hyder Ali in 
India, " I never knew that Providence was 
one of your allies," Elliot replied, " The on- 
ly one, Sire, whom we don't pay ! " 

And on one occasion, when somebody 
was lamenting to Talleyrand about the dis- 
putes between Baden and Bavaria, which 
seemed contemptible enough after the colos- 
sal scale of the wars against Napoleon: 

" Rassurez votes, 7no7i ami,'' said Talleyrand, 
" tontes ces dissensions 7ie sont que badinage 
et bava^'dage!' 

The politicians of Uncle Sam lack much 
of this brightness in tone and language. 

They do very well to send home to the 
Secretary of State a despatch on the hog 
question, on the price of corn, on patent 
guns. 

They excel in finding boarding-houses for 
their compatriots, and procuring tickets for 
State balls and national museums. 

But as dignified and imposing representa- 
tives of their country they are signal failures. 

They will chew tooth-picks. 

They will cock up their legs. 

Imagine M. de Freycinet or M. de St. Val- 
lier doine such things ! 



THE DIPLOMATS. 



171 



I have seen some of the diplomats of Un- 
cle Sam, at the Elysee, for instance, and they 
have made a very poor showing. 

Sent by a democratic Repubhc professing- 
to be exemplars of simplicity, they appear 
uncouth, bourgeois, plain, in their black 
evening dress, amid the gorgeous costumes 
and shining decorations of the representa- 
tives of other lands. 

Look at the most of them, cursorily, at a 
reception, and you confound them with the 
waiters. 

A very few of the envoys of the United 
States abroad have received consideration 
for their intrinsic worth. 

Such men are Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Wheaton, 
Mr. Motley, Mr. Irving, Mr. Bayard Taylor, 
Mr. John Hay, who were Ministers. 

Such men are Mr. Hawthorne, Mr. Bret 
Harte, Mr. Howells, who were Consuls. 

They may have made bad campaign 
speeches at home, written fulsome political 
biographies or partisan newspaper articles; 
but they were scholarly, representative men, 
who, when abroad, reflected credit on their 
country. 

The ordinary politicians of Uncle Sam 



1-2 ^^f^-^'- l'-\'CLE SAM. 

despise the men who make fame and money 
by the pen. They contemptuously call them 
" literary fellers," and scratch their names 
from the slate. 

One of the ablest diplomats this country 
ever sent abroad was Charles Francis Adams. 

He was Minister to the Court of St. James, 
durino; the administration of Lincoln. 

His grandfather. John Adams, held the 
same post in the time of the Confederation. 

This short, stumpy, cold man. this Charles 
Francis Adams, with his bald head, his im- 
passive face, his small, keen eyes, kept a 
sharp lookout for his country's interests. 

The great war between the North and 
South was going on; England, while profess- 
ing neutrality, was secretly abetting the 
South, for whom cruisers were fitted out in 
her ports. 

When Mr. Adams heard of it. he wrote to 
Lord Russell. 

" It would be superfluous in me to point 
out to your lordship that this is war." 

Three days after. Mr. Adams received the 
following reply from the Foreign Office. 

" Lord Russell presents his compliments 
to Mr. Adams, and has the honor to inform 



THE DIPLOMATS. 



17: 



him that instructions have been issued which 
will prevent the departure of the two iron- 
clad vessels from Liverpool." 

The short, bald, cold man sent by Uncle 
Sam to do some work, did it effectually. 

He was the son of John Quincy Adams, 
also a statesman and a diplomat, also a 
scholar. 

When Algernon Sidney visited the pubhc 
library of Copenhagen, he wrote in the album 
there : 

" Manus Jicec inimica tyrannis, Ense petit 
placida'}n sub libertate guietamT 

Terlon, ambassador of Louis XIV, tore it 
out as insulting to his master. 

John Quincy Adams periphrased these 
lines of Sidney's in the following spirited 
fashion in the midst of a debate in the House 
of Representatives. 

" This hand to tyrants ever sworn the foe, 
For Freedom only deals the deadly blow, 
Then sheathes in calm repose the venj^eful blade, 
For gentle peace in Freedom's holy shade.' 

The Adamses, the Danas, the Fishes, have 
done some good work in the politics of Uncle 
Sam. 

Mr. Washburne, slight, long-haired, suave, 



174 i^^^'^- Ux\CLE SAM. 

the Minister of the United States in Paris 
during the Franco-German War, attained an 
international reputation for his energy and 
intelHgence. 

He was the first foreign Minister to recog- 
nize the Government of the French RepubHc. 

He did more. 

He managed, with remarkable tact, to 
keep on confidential terms at the same time 
with Bismarck, with Favre, and \\ith Rigault. 

It was at this period that Mr. Henry La- 
bouchere, then a " Besieged Resident in 
Paris," wrote : 

•' How different American diplomatists are to the prim 
old women who represent us abroad, with a staff' of half a 
dozen dandies, helping each other to do nothing, who have 
been taught to regard all who are not of their craft as their 
natural enemies!" 

Mr. Lowell, who was Minister in London 
under Mr. President Arthur, was a model 
diplomat. But he was unpopular at home on 
account of his chilly attitude toward the Irish. 

An Anglo-Saxon to the backbone, Mr. 
Lowell has no fondness for the Irish. There 
is nothing of the demagogue about him. 

He parts what remains of his hair in the 
middle. He runs up a respectable wash bill. 



THE DIPLOMATS. 



175 



He does not believe either in the infalli- 
bility of the Pope or of the populace. 

He writes and speaks correctly. 

He does not necessarily detest a lord, and 
has dined with the Queen. 

That settles his fate with the electors of 
Uncle Sam. 

Speaking of Ministers to England, I must 
not forget Mr. Schenck. 

As a general in the war between the North 
and South, he spilt more claret on the table- 
cloth than he did blood on the battle-field, so 
President Grant, who was a friend of his, 
sent him to St. James's by way of consolation 
and reward. 

Mr. Schenck neither distinguished himself 
by the elegance of his manners nor the qual- 
ity of his wit or his whisky, nor the flavor 
of his anecdotes or his segars. 

He arrived at fame in a more unique way. 

He published a little hand-book on poker. 

Imagine the horror and disgust of so starch 
and stiff an old gentleman as Edward Ever- 
ett, one of his highly respectable predeces- 
sors at St. James's, had he known in his day 
that a man like Mr. Schenck should ever 
succeed him. 



176 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

And yet Mr. Schcnck made more of a hit 
in England with his booklet on poker than 
Mr. Everett ever made with his speeches 
and letters. 

There was a little 7)iot current at the time 
in London. 

" I hear that Parliament will be opened by 
the Queen," said one American to another. 

' That's nothing. When Schenck plays 
poker, jack-pots are frequently opened with 
two, and sometimes three queens." 

Please do not infer from my remarks that 
al! the representatives of Uncle Sam abroad 
are of a low stamp. That would be an in- 
justice. In those sad days when Mrs. Presi- 
dent Hayes wouldn't allow wine to be served 
at diplomatic dinners, there were some good 
men at foreign posts. 

There was Mr. White at Berlin, Mr. John 
Welch in London, Mr. Noyes in Paris. 

Mr. White, as Minister, had great social 
success in Germany. 

Just think of it, M. de Bismarck gave the 
diplomat his picture with his autograph ! 

Mr. White is an educated, hospitable gen- 
tleman with good manners and a little 
vanity. 



THE DIPLOMATS. 



17; 



Mr. Noyes, as Minister in Paris, was the 
type of the bluff, western stump-speaker in 
a dress-coat. He had lost a leg in the war ; 
had been Governor of Ohio ; had nominated 
Hayes. 

*' He doesn't speak French. What a pity !" 
I said of Noyes to Henri Martin, the historian, 
at Passy one afternoon. 

" Oh, le general Noyes," answered the old 
man, " he have no need to speak ze French 
language ! He so aimable, he smile ze French 
language ! " 

Mr. John Welch, Minister in London, was 
a specimen of the merchant prince sent by 
Uncle Sam to represent him abroad. 

He was one of those rich men who con- 
tribute big sums to the campaign funds of 
their parties, and receive their reward in for- 
eign missions. 

Mr. Morton, who was Minister to France, 
is such a man. 

Mr. Astor, who was Minister to Italy, is 
another. 

Mr. Morton has written many cheques in 
the cour.se of his political career. 

Mr. Astor has written a novel. 

I prefer Mr. Morton as an author. 



I 78 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Let me now grlance at some of the diplo- 
mats of the present Administration. 

Mr. Secretary of State Bayard is a tall, 
muscular man, of courtly bearing and old- 
school manners. He has a long, solemn, 
clean-shaven face. He claims to come from 
Huguenot and Dutch stock. His father and 
grandfather were Senators from his native 
duodecimo State of Delaware. 

Mr. Secretary Bayard is very deaf. 

Lucky man ! 

He does not hear all the evil the " short- 
hair Democrats " say of him. 

I must inform you here, by-the-way, that 
the Democrats of the Union are divided into 
two classes, " swallow-tail Democrats " and 
" short-hair Democrats." 

The "swallow-tail Democrats" are the 
wealthy, fashionable, conservative members 
of the party. 

The *' short-hair Democrats" are the poor, 
unwashed, riff-raff members of the party. 
Mr. Secretary Bayard, I need hardly say, is 
a " swallow-tail Democrat." 

He had a great reputation for brains be- 
fore his elevation to the Secretaryship. 

Mr. Secretary Bayard is now famous main- 



THE DIPLOMATS. 



79 



ly for his knowledge of blooded horses, for 
the way he prepares terrapin, and for his 
poHteness to the fair sex. 

Mr. Adee, the Assistant Secretary, is the 
possessor of one of the finest Hbraries in 
Washington. It may not be unnecessary to 
add that he is a gentleman who reads his 
books, and that he has charming manners. 
Mr. Adee is slightly deaf — less so than Mr. 
Secretary Bayard and Lord Chesterfield, 
but, like those gentlemen, he can be gallant 
all the same. 

" The only reason why I regret my in- 
firmity," he remarked to Miss Thursby, 
after endeavoring to hear her sing at a 
soiree some time ago, " is that the pleasure 
to catch the full sound of your voice is de- 
nied me." 

Mr. Sevelon Brown — I don't know wheth- 
er I have his ridiculous first name correct — 
was for a long time the chief clerk of the 
State Department. 

Though a Republican, this baby-faced, 
pompous little man was able to keep his of- 
fice under an opposition Administration. He 
knew the ropes. His wife is rich, and, I 
hear, has influence. 



l8o HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Mr. James Fenner Lee ably replaces Mr. 
Sevelon Brown. 

I tell you. Count, rich women have more 
power in the politics of Uncle Sam than they 
have in Europe. 

Mere riches does it here, however ; there 
is not so much need of tact, wit. refinement. 

Most of the lady politicians of Washing- 
ton differ from those of Paris and St. Peters- 
burg as Miss Fanny Davenport, when play- 
Fcdora, differs from Madame Sarah Bern- 
hardt. 

I know pretty well that Mr. R. R. Hitt, for 
instance, now member of Congress from Illi- 
nois, member of the Foreign Affairs Com- 
mittee, would never have been Secretary of 
Legation under President Hayes, Assistant 
Secretary of State under President Garfield, 
if his attractive and intelligent wife had not 
furnished him with the scudi. 

But I must say that Mr. Hitt. in spite of 
his bow-legs and his indifferent manners, is 
an interesting man. 

The Chairman of the House Committee 
on Foreign Affairs is Mr. Perry Belmont, of 
New York. 

He is a young man. the son of a rich 



THE DIPLOMATS. l8l 

banker, and made a name for himself a few 
years ago by asking Mr. Blaine, then before 
his committee, some sharp questions on his 
implication in some foreign land swindles. 

The two men almost came to blows. 

Statesmen in this country nowadays rarely 
fight with swords or pistols. Hamilton had 
a duel with Burr, and was killed. Clay and 
Jackson had a meeting on the field of honor. 
Benton and Gratz Brown, of Missouri, were 
duelists, and so were Randolph of Virginia, 
and Butler, of South Carolina. 

But duelling is not a general practice 
here. 

The politicians of Uncle Sam fight with 
their fists, or their jaws, rather than with 
their rapiers and their pistols. 

Some of the best-trained diplomats in the 
foreign service of this country are the first 
and second Secretaries (jf Legation, who 
have been kept in office during several Ad- 
ministrations. There is Mr. Henry White, 
in London; Mr. Henri Vignaud, in Paris; 
Mr. Chapman Coleman, in Berlin. 

Their main business seems to be to teach 
their chiefs the etiquette of the country to 
which they are accredited, and to see to it 



1 82 mu. (.\i/./-; s.LU. 

that the foreicrn letters are not written with 
too many faults of orthoorraphy. 

Mr. Phelps, of Vermont, who now repre- 
sents this Government at St. James's, was a 
lawyer and a juristic lecturer before his ap- 
pointment. 

Mr. McLane. of Maryland, who is Minis- 
ter at Paris, owes his position to his family- 
connections. He was educated at the Lycee 
Henri IV.. however, and has some fitness 
for his post. 

Mr. Pendleton, of Ohio, the Minister to 
Germany, is styled " Gentleman George " 
at home, and is the father of the present 
Civil-Service Law. 

The diplomats of I'ncle Sam. though their 
business is of little moment, and is almost 
all transacted by telegraph, still keep up a 
good deal of old-time red tape, and main- 
tain a certain we-could-tell-if-we-would mys- 
tery. 

Not as much as we do. but still more than 
enough. 

Mr. Stallo. at Rome. Mr. Hubbard, in Ja- 
pan. Mr. Lothrop. in St. Petersburg, consider 
themselves of great importance. 

M-. John Biorelow. at Paris, used to think 



THE DIPLOMATS. 



183 



the fate of Europe depended on his de- 
spatches. 

He is a dabbler in letters and diplomacy. 

The best thing- he has is the original man- 
uscript (A Franklin's " Autobiography," a 
rarit)- which he bought while abroad. 

Ask these gentlemen a simple question, 
and they will reply to that simple question 
as Martin Van Buren, according to Thurlow 
Weed, was wont to do. 

You may not have heard this story : 

One day, the merits of Mr. Van l^uren 
were being discussed by a party of gentle- 
men on a Hudson River steamboat. One of 
the party had been dwelling upon his non- 
committalism, and complaining that " a 
plain answer to a plain cjuestion was never 
yet elicited from him." 

" I'll w^ager the champagne for the com- 
pany," added he. " that one of us shall go 
down to the cabin and ask Mr. Van Buren 
the simplest question which can be thought 
of, and he will evade a direct answer. Yes, 
and I'll give him leave, too, to tell Mr. Van 
i^uren why he asks the question, and that 
there is a bet depending on his reply." 

This seemed fair enough. One of tlie 



184 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

party was deputed to go down and try 
the experiment. He found Mr. Van Buren. 
whom he knew well, in the saloon, and said 
to him : 

" Mr. Van Buren. some gentlemen on the 
upper deck have been accusing you of non- 
committalism, and have just laid a wager 
that you would not give a plain answer to 
the simplest question, and they deputed me 
to test the fact. Now. sir, allow me to ask 
you : Where does the sun rise ?" 

Mr. Van Buren's brow contracted ; he 
hesitated a moment, and then said : 

" The terms east and west are conven- 
tional ; but I — " 

" That'll do ! " interrupted the interroga- 
tor ; " we've lost the bet !" 

I said, in an early part of this letter, that 
there are few boiimots to be attributed to 
the diplomats of Uncle Sam. 

I heard Senator Evarts get off a witty 
saying at the State Department one morn- 
ing. 

He had entered the elevator, which hap- 
pened to be loaded with an unusual number 
of strangers, presumably applicants for min- 
isterships and consulships. 



TIfE DIPLOMATS. 



i«5 



Turning to a friend who accompanied 
him, Mr. Evarts said, "This is the largest 
collection for foreign missions that I have 
seen taken up for some time." 

And Colonel Charles Chaille-Long, who 
has served his country as a diplomat in 
Egypt, is also credited with a bright, if 
cynical, reply. 

" Sir," said an enthusiast to him one day, 
"we ought to open all the nation's doors to 
Liberty !" 

" Aren't you afraid of a draught ?" 

With these rather prosy views on the dip- 
lomats of Uncle Sam, I close, my dear Count, 
and I pray God that He may have you in His 
holy keeping. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE FINANCIERS. 

If Uncle Sam dearly loves a lord at times, 
he always dearly loves a financier. 

Our honorable friend always bows to the 
man who manipulates money on a large scale. 

The broker, the banker, the railroad mag- 
nate, are objects of his admiration. 

" Put money in thy purse !" 

The advice which lago gives Cassio is the 
advice which Uncle Sam gives his nephews. 

Uncle Sam is proud of the humble origins 
of his millionaires. 

Mr. Jay Gould peddled mousetraps and 
wrote a county history. 

Mr. Mackay worked the mines with pick- 
axe and shovel. 

Mr. Astor, who founded the fortunes of 
his house, dealt in furs. 

Mr. Lorrillard Imd a little tobacco shop. 

The lower these men were down, and the 

i86 



riTF. FIKAA'CfERS. 787 

higher they rose, thinks Uncle Sam, the 
g^reater the credit and honr)r. 

Mr. Armour, of Chicago, Mr. Huntington 
and Mr. Crocker, of San Francisc<=j, Mr. Kus- 
sell Sage, Mr. Sidney Dillon, and Mr. Cyrus 
Field, of New York, are the cynosure of the 
eyes of Uncle Sam. 

He likes to read their names at the foot 
of cheques drawn for political and social 
purposes. 

Drexel and Cooke, lielmont and Clews, 
Morgan and Morton, the Seligmans, the 
Browns, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. — members of the 
haute finance — Uncle Sam consults and courts, 
smiles upon, shakes hands with, and enter- 
tains. 

They are powers in financial circles in Xew 
York and Washington. 

Have you any idea, my dear Count, of 
the vastness of the financial operations of this 
Government ? 

I took up the Banker s Monthly the other 
day, and read the following array of facts 
and figures : 

" The growth and magnitude of the United States are 
brought out very strikingly in a little volume of sixty 
pages just issued by the Treasury Department, entitled 



1 88 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

' Receipts and Disbursements of the United States for the 
P'iscal Year Ending June 30, 1887. Over a million dol- 
lars a day, including Sundays — that is what the statement 
of receipts shows. The total gross receipts for the year 
were $37^.403,277. That is several millions more than 
the year before, and, in fact, is more than any year except 
war times. The customs service paid |!2 18,000.000 of it, 
internal revenue $118,000,000, public lands $10,000,000, 
miscellaneous $23,000,000. As to the other side, the 
grand total of expenses is set down at $267,000,000. 
That leaves a net profit for the year's business of over 
$100,000,000. Of the disbursements $45,000,000 were 
for salaries, $68,000,000 for ordinary expenses, $14,000,- 
000 for public works, and $137,000,000 for unusual and 
extraordinary expenses, meaning pensions, war claims, 
headstones for soldiers' graves, maintenance of soldiers' 
homes, etc. There are some curious points among the 
incidentals of the expenses. It shows, for instance, the 
salaries of the much-groaned-about navy to be less than a 
quarter of a million a year, while those of the War De- 
partment are four times as much, and those of the Treas- 
ury officials ten times as much as the navy salaries. The 
salaries and mileage of Congress are estimated at over 
$2,000,000 a year." 

It is the fashion just now, in this time of 
labor unions, to berate the big financiers 
here. 

The masses look upon them with distrust 
and suspicion. 

But many of these big" financiers have con- 



THE FINANCIERS. 1 89 

tributed very essentially to the material and 
intellectual standing of Uncle Sam. 

George Peabody founded a system of 
schools. 

Johns Hopkins founded a university. 

James Lick built a magnificent observa- 
tory. 

Astor and Lenox established libraries. 

Mr. Bloodgood, I hear, patronizes comic 
opera. 

Vanderbilt built a finely equipped school 
of medicine and surgery. 

Almost all the eleemosynary literary and 
art institutions in this country owe their ori- 
gin to the munificence of private citizens of 
large means. 

How often have I strolled through the 
Corcoran Art Gallery, in Washington, and 
thanked the rich old, gentleman who estab- 
lished it ! 

In no country more than this are the finan- 
ciers directly interested in the Government. 

When the late war broke out, the rich men 
of Uncle Sam promptly got out their cheque- 
books and supported the Administration. 

Vanderbilt put a steamer at the disposal 
of the Government. 



[90 



//ox. CWC/.E SAM. 



The Union Loague C'lub. composed largely 
of the. nabobs of commerce and finance, sub- 
scribed Hberally to carry on the war. 

We are apt to think of the rich men of 
America as wholly devoted to the acquisi- 
tion of the mighty dollar. 

Thev also know how to spend it. 

Thev back up musical enterprises, foreign 
expeditions, home improvements. 

If the financiers often have their hands in 
other people's pockets, they also often have 
them in their own : and they don't keep them 
there. 

It is a mistake to think that the financiers 
of Uncle Sam are any less able to enjoy the 
amenities of life than are our own. 

M. de Rothschild is not more versed in rare 
books than Mr. Brayton Ives. 

M. Ephrussi or M. Lagrange is not a more 
liberal patron of the turf than Mr. Keene or 
Mr. Belmont. 

The financiers of Wall Street are quite as 
fond of fast horses, of pretty actresses, of 
the pleasures of the table, as those of the 
Place de la Bourse. 

Though the possession of a comfortable 
bank account undoubtedly crives vou influ- 



■j &' 



IJJh J-/\A A './/:/<■:.. 



191 



cnce, you do not feel the hand of Uncle Sam 
on your shoulder at every step here. 

The power of a uniformed bureaucracy is 
almost invisible here. 

The officials of Uncle Sam enjoy but a 
limited tenure of office, and behave accord- 

There is little red tape, little arrogance, 
here. 

Titles are as plentiful as decorations are 
among us, but titles do not convey any 
great prestige. 

Even the judges are, in a measure, depend- 
ent on popular suffrage. 

The big financiers of Uncle Sam are in- 
clined to support the Republican party. 

Their interests lead them that way. 

But in times of crisis they stand by Uncle 
Sam without regard to political affiliations. 

And any overweening pride these finan- 
ciers may have in their power is qualified by 
the public opinion couched by the poet Saxe 
in these witty lines : 

" Of all the notable thin;(s on earth, 
The queerest one is pride of birth, 
Amon;^ our fierce Democracie ! 
A bridge across a hundred years, 



192 nchw uxcj./-: sam. 

Without a prop to save it from sneers — 
Not even a couple of rotten Peers — 
A thing for laughter, fleers, and jeers, 
Is American aristocracy ! 

" English and Irish. French and Sixinish, 
German, Italian, Dutch, and Danish, 
Crossing their veins until they vanish 

In one conglomeration ! 
So subtle a tangle of Blood, indeed, 
No modern Harvey will ever succeed 

In finding the circulation ! 

"Depend upon it, my snojbbish friend. 
Your family thread you can't ascend 
Without good reason to apprehend 
You will find it waxad at the farther end 

By some plebeian vocation; 
Or, worse than that, your boasted line 
May end in a loop of stronger twine. 
That plagued some worthy rela'tion ! " 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE WITS. 

Uncle Sam likes a joke. 

His wit is of a purely local order. 

Each section of his domain has its own. 

Uncle Sam laughs at one thing in Massa- 
chusetts, at another in California, at another 
in Georgia, at another in Indiana. 

Josh Hillings is one of the most famous 
wits of Uncle Sam. 

lie gives his early experiences character- 
istically, thus : 

" In common with most all Americans who have to push 
early, to test their own wings, I engaged in all the usual 
enterprises of a frontiersman, having been at times a land- 
hunter, farmer, drover, steamboat captain, auctioneer, pol- 
itician, and even pioneer, for I partially organized an en- 
terprise, as early as 1835, to cross the Rocky Mountains. 
This last-named enterprise was a profound failure, but its 
inception and preliminary arrangements afforded me one 
of the choicest relics of my early adventures, and that in 
three letters^ now in my |)ossessioii, written to me person- 
13 '93 



194 



nOA\ UNCLE SAM. 



ally by Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, and Martin 
Van Buren, recommending me and the undertaking 
to the kind care and patronage of all people and all 
nations. 

" If I may be said to ever have commenced a literary 
career, it certainly was much later in life than most men 
commit the folly, for I had passed forty-five years before 
I wrote a line for the public eye. What little reputation I 
may have made has been accomplished within the last nine 
years, and I consider that I owe all this little to the kind- 
ness of the world at large, who, while they have discovered 
but little wit, or even humor, in what I have written, have 
done me the credit to acknowledge that my productions 
have been free from malice. I pin all my faith, hope, and 
charity upon this one impulse of my nature; and that is, 
if I could have my way, there would be a smile contin- 
ually on the face of every human being on God's footstool, 
and this smile should ever and anon widen into a broad 
grin. 

" I have not the inclination to go into an extended ac- 
count of the trials and failures that I have met with since 
I first put on the cap and bells, but I can assure you that 
I would not contend with them again for what little glory 
and stamps they have won for me. I have written two 
books, but my pet is 'Josh Billings's Farmer's Almanac,' 
which has been issued for the last three years, the annual 
sale of which has exceeded one hundred thousand copies." 

Petroleum V. Nasby is another humorist. 
Henry Clay Lukens is another. 
Joel Chandler Harris has caught the essence 
of negro wit. 



THE WITS. 195 

Here are some specimens : 

Drive out de dreamin' dog. 

Mighty few horses fits a barley hatch. 

Noddin' nigger gives the ash-cake a chill. 

Don't fall out wid de fat what cook de 'possum. 

Fightin' nigger ain't far from de callaboose. 

Ole cloze better go 'round de picket fence. 

You kin sell mo' patter rallers dan boozer-bears. 

Short stirrups en a do'-back horse. 

Mighty good sheep w'ats wuff mo' dan his wool. 

Sunday pra'rs ain't gwineter las' all de week. 

You will, I fear, find these as hard to un- 
derstand as Jasmin. 

The wit and humor of Uncle Sam are, in 
fact, untranslatable. 

Each newspaper here has what they call 
"a funny man," a kind of a paid jester. 

The wits of the press write in parables 
and proverbs. 

They reproduce the common sense of 
Uncle Sam. 

Ingersoll once said that Abraham Lincoln 
was a cross between ^sop, Rabelais, and 
Franklin. 

Of many of the newspaper wits of Uncle 
Sam the same can be said. 

Artemus Ward wa-s a great wag in his way. 



196 



//c>.\. ( AC/./-: SAM. 



You mustn't expect In his writingfs the 
point of Chamfort or Rivarol ; but a pithy 
kind of homely wisdom ) ou will certainly 
find in him. 

Mark Twain, in a private letter to a friend 
in Tennessee, said o( Artemus Ward : 

" He was one of the kindest and gentlest of men, and the 
hold he took on the English people surpasses imagination. 
Artemus Ward once said to me gravely, almost sadly : 

" ' Clemens, I have done too much fooling, too much 
trifling ; I am going to write something that will live.' 

" ' Well, what, for instance ? ' 

" In the same grave way, he said : 

"'Alie.' 

" It was an admirable surprise. 1 was just ready to 
cry ; he was becoming pathetic." 

One of Artemus Ward's best things was 
his parody of the census-taker. 

Uncle Sam, by the way, takes a census 
every ten years. 

" The sences taker in our town being taken sick, he dep- 
pertised me to go out for him one day, and as he was too 
ill to give me information how to perceed, I was conse- 
kently compelled to go it blind. Sittin' down by the road- 
siile, I draw'd up the foUerin' list of questions, which I 
proposed to ax the people I visited : 

" ' Wat's your age ?' 

" ' Whar' was you born ?' 



'I'Hh WITS. 



97 



" ' Air you married i* and if so, hf;w dfj you like it ?' 

'■' ' ll(jw many children hav' you ? and do they sufficiently 
resemble you so as to preclood the possibility of their 
belongin' to any of your nabers ?' 

"'Did you ever have the measles? and if so, how 
many ? ' 

** * Hav' you a twin brother several years older than 
yourself ?' 

*' ' State how much pork, impendin' crysis, Dutch cheese, 
poplar survinity, standard poetry, children's strainers, 
slave code, catnip, red flannel, ancient history, pickled to- 
matoes, old junk, perfoomery, coal ile, liberty, hoop-skirts, 
etc., have you got on hand ?' 

" But it didn't work, I got into a row, at the first house 
I stopt at, with some old maids. Disbelievin' the answers 
they give in regard to their ages, I endeavored to open 
their mouths and look at their teeth, same as they do with 
horses, but they floo into a violent rage, and tackled me 
with brooms and sich. Takin' the sences requires expe- 
rience, like as any other bizness." 

Much of the wit and humor floating about 
in the dominions of Uncle Sam depends on 
odd orthography, local dialect, eccentricity 
of arrangement. 

Other newspaper wits are Eli Perkins, 
Miner Griswold, James Bailey — pert, perti- 
nent, pointed. 

I am especially fond of Max Adeler. 

One of his best satires is his proposed new 
Congressional Record, the official publication 



\gS HON. UNCLE SAM. 

containing the speeches of Senators and Rep- 
resentatives. 

" If Congress resolve to act upon the suggestion of Sen- 
ator Miller, that the Congressional Record \it issued as a 
weekly, and sent to every family in the country, some 
modification ought to be made in the contents of the 
Record. The jiaper is much too heavy and dismal in its 
present condition. As for the general contents, describ- 
ing the business proceedings in the Senate and the House, 
we recommend that these should be put in the form of 
verse. 

" We should treat them, say, something in this fashion : 

Mr. Hill 
Introduced a bill 
To give John Smith a pension. 

Then Atkinson, of Kansas, rose to make an explanation, 
But was pulled down by a colleague in a state of indig- 
nation. 
And Mr. Alexander, in a speech about insurance, 
Taxed the patience of his hearers pretty nearly past en- 
durance; 
After which Judge Whittaker denounced the Reciprocity 
Treaty with Hawaii as a scandalous monstrosity. 



" Of course, versification of the Congressional Record 
would require the services of a poet laureate of rather un- 
usual powers. If Congress shall accept seriously the sug- 
gestions which we make, with an earnest desire to promote 
the public interest, we shall venture to recommend the 
selection of the Sweet Singer of Michigan as the first oc- 
cupant of the laureate's ofiice." 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE PHILOSOPHERS. 

In writing his new play, " Anarchy," Mr. 
Steele Mackaye proves himself to be a politi- 
cal philosopher. He shows, by scenes and 
acts founded on incidents of the French Rev- 
olution, that unbridled liberty leads to ruin 
and death. 

Political philosophers have not always been 
as interesting as Mr. .Steele Mackaye. 

Jefferson and Hamilton, for instance, two 
of the earliest political philosophers of Uncle 
Sam, discussed limited suffrage, the division 
and balance of power, and other such topics. 
Jefferson, of Virginia, a disciple of Rousseau 
and Voltaire, advocated, a popular govern- 
ment, with public suffrage, limited executive 
powers, and wide scope to local authorities. 

Hamilton, of New York, a disciple of 
Locke and Burke, was in favor of a more 
centralized government. 
199 



200 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Jefferson was a dilettante in democracy; 
Hamilton was an admirer of aristocracy. 

Jefferson vented his views in a voluminous 
private correspondence; Hamilton published 
his in the public prints. 

Jefferson was Secretary of State during the 
Washington administration; Hamilton was 
Secretary of the Treasury. 

Jefferson had a pleasant farm at Monticello, 
where he entertained generously; Hamilton 
was always in financial straits. 

" I have beheld one of the wonders of the 
world," Talleyrand wrote of him in 1794 — 
" a man who has made the fortune of a nation 
laboring all night to support a family." 

Hamilton, during several years, did more 
than support one family. 

He supported two. 

There is quite a little romance here. 

A political philosopher can 'get into trou- 
ble, like the rest of mankind. 

It appears that one day, in Philadelphia, a 
Mrs. Reynolds, of New York, called on Mr. 
Secretary Hamilton, and asked him to let her 
have a little money to get back home. Ham- 
ilton assured the lady that he had no money 
then, but that he would be pleased to procure 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 20I 

enough for her purpose later. The lady was 
as complaisant as she was comely, and gave 
the Secretary her address. 

In the evening Mr. Secretary Hamilton 
called upon her. 

A few days afterward she was " Maria," 
and not " Mrs. Reynolds," to him. 

The liaison lasted, and a correspondence 
between the two began. 

Then troubles arose. 

The husband of Mrs. Reynolds got wind 
of the amour, and the worthless scamp 
profited by it. 

He wrote the Secretary for gifts of money — 
which he termed loans — and received them. 

He wrote again and again for loans, al- 
ways in a humble and respectful tone, and 
received them. 

He once asked Hamilton for a position in 
the Treasury Department, but Hamiltofi 
refused. 

Money, Reynolds received whenever he 
asked for it, but public office was denied him. 
His consent and silence were bought. . 

This state of things lasted for some time. 

Again and again Hamilton resolved to 
break with the siren. 



202 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

Then he would receive a note like this : 

" For God sake be not so voed of all 
hummanity as to deni me this Last request, 
i)ut if you will not Call sometime this night 
I no its late but any tim between this and 
twelve A'clock I shall be up Let me Intreat 
you If )'ou wont Come to send me a Line oh 
my head I can rite no more do something to 
Ease My heart or Els I no not what I shall 
do for so I cannot live. Commit this to the 
care of my maid be not offended I beg." 

And Hamilton yielded again. 

Now it happened that the husband Rey- 
nolds found himself in prison for debt, about 
live years after the liaison, and thought he 
could get himself out by selling the good 
name of Hamilton to his political opponents. 

He showed letters in Hamilton's hand- 
writing, proving that between himself and 
the Secretary of the Treasury some myste- 
rious connection, in\olving monetary trans- 
actions, had existed. 

To clear his official honor from suspicion, 
Hamilton boldly printed a pamphlet in 1797, 
in which he made a clean breast of the mat- 
ter, and asked the indulgence of his country- 
men. 



TIIK I'lJILOSOniKRS. 20 -^ 

You can imagine how the Democratic 
press of the period gloated over those reve- 
lations. 

They make use of any weapons in their 
pohtical warfare here. 
Private Hfe is not sacred. 
M. de Cormenin used to be blamed by*" 
M. Alphonse Karr for exposing to public 
view the extravagant wash bills of his Ma- 
jesty, Louis Philippe. 
They go further here. 

Neither a candidate's home nor his hotel 
apartment is his castle on the domain of 
Uncle Sam. 

They went so far, a few years ago, as to 
get on a step-ladder, look in at the transom 
of a certain candidate's hotel room, and re- 
port what wicked things he was doing there. 
Reveiions a 710s inoulons. 
When the philosophers had discussed and 
decided that a popular and not a royal Gov- 
ernment was best for Uncle Sam, they began 
to discuss what were the rights of the nation 
recently constituted, and what were the 
rights of the States. 

Is the Union temporary or permanent } Is 
the State or the Union superior? 



204 



HON. UNCLE SAM. 



Three theories, with three sets of philo- 
sophic advocates, now appeared 

Hamilton, Jay, Marshall, Story, Web- 
ster, maintained the national theory. The 
Union is a nation indivisible and per- 
petual. 

Jefferson and Calhoun maintained the 
States'-right theory. They affirmed that the 
United States were not a nation at the time 
of the Revolution, and that hence the States 
arc, in a moment of dissatisfaction with the 
Union, the independent and supreme arbi- 
ters of their destinies. 

The Union is temporary and divisible. 

A third set of philosophic politicans, Mad- 
ison, Jackson, Taney, maintained what is 
known as the " partial national " theory. The 
States were originally independent, they af- 
fu-mcd,but surrendered a part of their sove- 
reignty when the Constitution was voted 
and adc^pted by them. 

The Union is perpetual; the States have 
permanent reserved rights. 

Pounds of polemics and arguments, yards 
of debate and oratory, were expended on 
these points. In spite of all this, they were 
finally settled in 1865, not by the ingenuity 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 



205 



of the philosophers, but by the swords of the 
soldiers. 

Simultaneously with the discussion of 
Governmental powers arose questions of 
political economy. 

Different sections of the country, accord- 
ing to their interests or according- to what 
they supposed were their interests, adopted 
low or high tariif views. 

The South, an agricultural region, was early 
for free trade. 

The North and East, manufacturing sec- 
tions, pronounced for protection. 

The political economists manufactured 
treaties for or against these theories, accord- 
ing to the latitude and longitude wherein 
they lived. 

Carey, Greeley, Bowen, published works 
for a protective tariff. 

Perry and Wells are philosophic exponents 
of a low tariff. 

To-day Mr. Kelley and Mr. Randall, of 
Pennsylvania, are the stoutest advocates 
of protection ; Mr. Cox, of New York, 
and Mr. Frank Hurd, of Ohio, are free- 
traders. 

There is so much discussion about tariff 



2o6 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

nowadays that, you would suppose tariff 
were a being of flesh and blood — a candi- 
date for office. 

Political speculation in this country has, 
up to a year or two, been of a very practical 
and matter-of-fact nature. 

The cold Anglo-Saxon does not gesticu- 
late toward the clouds, like the excitable 
Gaul and the dreamy, beery Teuton. 

He always asks for the tangible results of 
his theories. He never loses sight of the 
earth in his speculative flights. 

" I tell you, you are nothing but an ideal- 
ist in politics !" hotly said General Kilpatrick, 
while in Washington on furlough during the 
war, discussing a point of martial law with 
Secretary Chase. " I maintain that you can 
do anything and everything with bayonets." 

" Yes, yes," calmly replied the stolid law- 
yer — " except sit on them !" 

The philosophers of Uncle Sam of the old 
school were timid, conservative, rarely lost 
their heads. 

It is true some of them were alarmists, 
false prophets. I remember having read 
somewhere that such philosophic jurists as 
Judge Kent and Judge Story thought the 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 207 

country was going to the devil in the days 
of Jackson, simply because Jackson did not 
share their views on politics. 

Vet, as a general thing, the political phi- 
losophers of Uncle Sam are long-headed and 
far-sighted. 

Dreamers like Henry Thoreau and Felix 
Adler exercise but little sway over peo- 
ple's minds here. The majority of even 
speculative Americans seem to believe that 
you cannot " save the world by a return to 
acorns and the golden age," as Carlyle once 
told Emerson the reformers of New England 
evidently tried to do. 

I have found some wise philosophic max- 
ims in the history of Uncle Sam. 

Franklin, who always seems to me to have 
written his precepts on grocery paper, gave 
all his countrymen the cue. 

Allow me to quote some of the senten- 
tious sayings I find current : 

" Politics," said Theodore Parker, "is the 
science of exigencies." 

" Great political questions," said Wendell 
Phillips, " stir the deepest nature of one- 
half the nation; but they pass far above the 
heads of the other half." 



2o8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

" This country," said Longfellow, " is not 
priest-ridden, but press-ridden." 

" It is wonderful," said Emerson, " how 
soon a piano gets into a log hut on the fron- 
tier ! You would think they found it under 
a pine stump." 

" The public is wiser," wrote George Ban- 
croft, " than the wisest critic." 

"Heroes in history seem to us poetic," 
says George William Curtis, " because they 
are there ; " but if we should tell the simple 
truth of some of our neighbors, it would 
sound like poetry." 

The ponderous disquisitions of your ped- 
ant of Germany, oi yowt savant oi the Col- 
lege de France, of your professor at Oxford 
or Cambridge, find little favor, small audi- 
ence, here. 

The average citizen of this country has 
the gift of expressing his opinion in pointed 
and pertinent form. 

He takes his philosophy and his poli- 
tics like his cocktail and his lunch — in a 
hurry. 

The driest political philosophers here are, 
strange to say, the ones that have the most 



THE PIirLOSOPHERS. 



209 



I mean the women who, in print and on 
platform, advocate women's rights. 

Such an agitator as Belva Lockwood 
makes me gape. 

Such agitators as Cady Stanton, Anna 
Brackett, Anna Dickinson, make me nod. 

They are not even as amusing as Louise 
Michel. 

Uncle Sam, who is uniformly polite to 
woman, who gives her great scope in every 
field of activity, who slaves while she shops, 
is impatient of her political philosophies. 

I don't blame him. 

The place of woman is at home. 

It is neither on the hustings nor in the di- 
vorce-court. 

Woman neglects the family here. 

" It is safe to say," remarks Dr. Dike, 
" that divorce has been doubled in propor- 
tion to marriages and population, in most of 
the Northern States, within thirty years." 

Gail Hamilton — cousin, adviser, and pri- 
vate secretary of James G. Blaine — is not 
abashed by these figures. 

She has no mean opinion of the power of 
her sex. 

" Man has subdued the world, but woman 
14. 



2 10 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

has subdued man. No monarch has been so 
great, no peasant so lowly, that he has not 
been glad to lay his best at the feet of wo- 
man." 

I continue my quotations : 

They give us foreigners many a hint as to 
the different kinds of opinion prevalent here. 

Let us compare fancies with facts. 

" Give me the centralism of liberty," said 
Charles Sumner ; " give me the imperialism 
of equal rights." 

A fine phrase ! 

And yet the negro in Georgia and Missis- 
sippi is forced to vote one way. the factory 
hand in Rhode Island and Massachusetts 
another. 

" Schoolhouses," wrote Horace Mann, the 
great advocate for public education, " are 
the republican line of fortifications." 

The school population of the country is 
estimated at eighteen millions. 

Of this mass, seven millions five hundred 
thousand grow up in absolute ignorance of 
the alphabet. 

Thus one voter in six on the domain of 
Uncle Sam cannot read or write ! 

These are stern, hard facts. 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 211 

It's a good thing to occasionally mix sen- 
timents with statistics. 

Henry Lloyd, four years ago, looked into 
the condition of child laborers in Pennsyl- 
vania, and wrote an essay on the subject. 

" Herds of little children of all ages," 
wrote he, " from six years upward, are at 
work in the coal-breakers, toiling in dirt 
and air thick with carbon-dust, from dawn 
to dark of every day in the week except 
Sunday. The coal-breakers are the only 
schools they know." 

There's food for the philosopher ! 

Let us turn to maxims again : 

They are so much pleasanter reading. 

" A politician thinks of the next election," 
wrote Freeman Clarke; '' a statesman, of the 
next generation." 

But in spite of all these fine sentiments, 
theoretical politics are held in slight esteem. 

Transcendentalism in politics is often the 
object of ridicule. 

You may remember the illustration which 
Senator Evarts gave ridiculing transcend- 
ental theoretical politics. 

It was at the banquet to Mr. Blaine at 
Delmonico's, some three years ago. 



212 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

"When Mr. Emerson was first founding and spreading 
the doctrine of transcendentalism, one of the greatest as- 
semblies of Presbyterians [before the country was divided 
at all] had been held in one of the Southern cities, and 
these eminent Doctors of Divinity, going up on the steam- 
boat [before railroads were constructed], were conversing 
very earnestly with one another, and very learnedly, on 
this new notion of Transcendentalism, and what it por- 
tended to the institutions of the Church. After their dis- 
cussion had declined [for there must be an end even to 
that], a sober and devout layman, who had heard this 
earnest disputation [without understanding a word of it], 
asked one of these Doctors of Divinity, with great sub- 
mission, if he would be so good as briefly to explain to 
him what Transcendentalism was. * Well,' said he, * my 
friend, it is a little difficult in a few words, but as we are 
passing by this bluff on the Mississippi River, do you 
notice those swallows' holes in the bluff?' 'Yes,' says 
the man, 'I do.' 'Well,' says he, 'if you break away all 
that bluff, and leave nothing but the swallows' holes, that 
is Transcendentalism.' And these now are the swallows' 
holes in politics [laughter] with the parties all brushed 
away, and nothing left but the vacant orifices." 

As far as I can make out, there are now 
three movements of poUtical speculative 
thought in the domain of Uncle Sam. 

The first is the practico-political philosophy 
of men like Mr. Blaine, Mr. Evarts, Mr. Til- 
den, Mr. Tucker, and Mr. Cox. 

They are conservative, studying ways and 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 



213 



means, dealing in safe old-time truisms, 
quoting the ancient authors. 

Speculate, they say, but do not speculate 
too much. 

" A marksman may improve his aim by 
shooting at long distances," they say with 
Cornwall Lewis, "but not by firing at the 
moon." 

The second school of speculative politics 
is represented in our time by Mr. James 
Russell Lowell and Mr. George William 
Curtis. 

Disciples of Emerson in their younger 
days, these men now head a small but com- 
pact and scholarly band of transcendental 
philosophers and dilettante politicians. They 
are not conservative, and they are not radi- 
cal. They believe in the scholar in politics. 
They believe in the reformer on the hust- 
ings. 

They are critically optimistic, if I may so 
say, carping at the present, and hopeful of 
the future. 

The views of this coterie may be best 
gleaned from the discourse on " Democracy," 
delivered by Mr. Lowell before the Midland 
Institute in London a couple of years ago. 



214 tfON. UNCLE SAM. 

Said Mr. Lowell : 

" Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in 
government, more Ukely to succeed in a new soil, but 
likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on 
its own merits, as others have done before it. For there 
is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than 
in mechanics. President Lincoln defined democracy to 
be ' the government of the people, by the people, for the 
people.' This is a sufficiently compact statement of it as 
a political arrangement. Theodore Parker said that 
* Democracy meant, not " I'm as good as you are," but 
''You're as good as I am." ' And this is the ethical con- 
ception of it, necessary as the complement of the other ; 
a conception which, could it be made actual and practical, 
would easily solve all the riddles of the old sphinx of poli- 
tical and social economy who sits by the roadside, has 
been proposing to mankind from the beginning, and which 
mankind have shown such a singular talent for answering 
wrongly. In this sense Christ was the first true Democrat 
that ever breathed, as the old dramatist, Dekker, said he 
was the first true gentleman. The characters may be eas- 
ily doubled, so strong is the likeness between them. I am 
one of those who believe that the real will never find an 
irremovable basis till it rests on the ideal. It used to be 
thought that a democracy was possible only in a small ter- 
ritory, and this is doubtless true of the tlemocracy strictly 
defined, for in such all the citizens decide directly upon 
every question of public concern in a general assembly. 
An example still survives in the tiny Swiss canton of Ap- 
penzell. But this immediate intervention of the people 
in their own affairs is not of the essence of democracy ; it 
is not necessary, nor, indeed, in most cases, practicable. 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 



215 



Democracies to which Mr. Lincoln's definition would 
fairly enough apply have existed, and now exist, in 
which, though the supreme authority resides in the peo- 
ple, yet they can act only indirect y on the national 
policy." 

Lowell is witty, pithy, epigrammatic. 

" There is no good in arguing with the 
inevitable," he says. "The only argument 
available with an east wind is to put on your 
overcoat." 

At another point he remarks : 

" We should remember that nothing is 
more natural for people whose education has 
been neglected, than to spell evolution w^ith 
an initial 'r.'" 

Again, we find this bit of wisdom. Speak- 
ing of the legislative compromise measures 
between North and South prior to the Civil 
War, the philosopher said : 

" We learned once for all that compromise 
makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof ; 
that it is a temporary expedient often wise 
in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in 
statesmanship." 

In spite of a quizzingly critical tone, when 
speaking of Democracy, Mr. Lowell is proud 
of its results. 



2l6 HON. UNCLE SAM. . 

" No ; amid all the fruitless turmoil and miscarriage of 
the world, if there be one thing steadfast and of favorable 
omen, one thing to make optimism distrust its own obscure 
distrust, it is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is 
better and more beautiful than themselves. The touch- 
stone of political and social institutions is their ability to 
supply them with worthy objects of this sentiment, which 
is the very tap-root of civilization and progress. There 
would seem to be no readier way of feeding it with the 
elements of growth and vigor than such an organization 
of society as will enable men to respect themselves, and 
so justify them in respecting others." 

All this is very fine on paper or in the ros- 
trum, but it is not substantiated by facts. 

The United States is no longer the bliss- 
ful Arcadia which our travelers in the last 
century, Rochefoucauld, Robin, Chastel- 
lux, loved to depict and hold up to our 
eyes. 

It is true the population has increased 
from three to sixty millions. 

It is true the original thirteen States have 
been joined by twenty-five sister-States. 

It is true there are more schools, colleges, 
churches, than there were. 

There is more money ; there are more 
manufactories ; there is a more extensive 
commerce. 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 21 7 

Telegraphs, telephones, railways, cover the 
land. 

The public debt is paid with stupendous 
rapidity. 

There is a large surplus in the treasury. 

The credit of Uncle Sam is excellent. 

But— 

Please open " Progress and Poverty," a 
book by Henry George, and you will under- 
stand why I insert that disagreeable dis- 
junctive conjunction. 

Henry George was a San Francisco jour- 
nalist when he carried the manuscript of his 
book from publisher to publisher in vain. 
Too abstruse, they said, too theoretical ! 
Finally a New York house accepted it. The 
success was great from the outset. 

Open the book ! 

The material prosperity of the country, 
argues George, may seem to be great, but it 
is a fictitious prosperity. No prosperity can 
be real that is based on unjust social condi- 
tions. 

" In the United States it is clear that squalor and mis- 
ery, and the vices and crimes that spring from them, 
everywhere increase as the village grows to the city, and 
the march of development brings the advantages of the 



2i8 HON. UNCLE SAM. 

improved methods of production amd exchange. It is in 
the older and richer sections of the Union that pauperism 
and distress among the working classes are becoming 
more painfully apparent. If there is less deep poverty in 
San Francisco than in New York, is it not because San 
Francisco is yet behind New York m all that both' cities 
are striving for ? When San Francisco reaches the point 
where New York now is, who will doubt that there will 
also be ragged and barefooted children on her streets ? 
This association of poverty with progress is the great 
enigma of our time. It is the central fact from which 
spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that per- 
plex the world." 

Henry George, in a style which combines 
the fervor of Rousseau with the lucidity of 
Descartes, goes on to state the grievances of 
the masses of Uncle Sam. Private fortunes, 
he says, make greater every year the dis- 
tinction between the classes of citizens. The 
condition of the hands in factories is virtual 
slavery. Tenement houses, owned by the 
rich and greedy, are hotbeds of corruption 
and misery. The public lands are fast dis- 
appearing. In New England and the West, 
farms are already rented at rates varying 
from one-fourth to one-half of the crop. 

" As liveried carriages appear, so do barefooted chil- 
dren. We are becoming used to talk of the working 
classes ; beggars are becoming so common that where it 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 2I9 

was once thought a crime little short of highway rob- 
bery to refuse food to one who asked for it, the gate is 
now barred and the bull-dog loosed, while laws are passed 
against vagrants which suggest those of Henry VIII." 

Your boasted progress is accompanied by 
poverty, affirms the philosopher in substance, 
and I beheve to do away with this anomaly 
by this remedy. I propose to abolish private 
property in land. 

" Historically, as ethically, private property 
in land is robbery." 

Do you notice the influence of Rousseau 
here ? of Prudhon ? 

I propose, continues George, that all land 
now still free in this country remain public 
domain. I propose that such land as is now 
called private property be taxed for the pub- 
lic good. 

" It is not necessary to confiscate land ; it 
is only necessary to confiscate rent." 

Then the philosopher proposes a system 
of administration and taxation which seems 
simple enough on paper, and closes his book 
with passages fully as fervid aad eloquent as 
can be found in the ancient prophets. 

Now you may agree with this man, or you 
may differ with him, but one thing is certain : 



220 ■ IfOM. UNCLE SAM. 

Henry George is bound to be influential 
in the long-run. He will be a power in 
politics. 

Mr. Evarts, Mr. Depew, Mr. Bayard, Mr. 
Hewitt, patting their low-cut waistcoats af- 
fectionately after a public dinner, smoking 
their twenty-five-cent cigars, may sneer at 
Socialists and Communists and Anarchists, 
and belittle them and denounce them. 

They may affirm that everything is all 
right as it is. 

They may say Uncle Sam is in tip-top 
health. 

They may make light of the theories of a 
newspaper man. 

" Sir," blurted Carlyle at a dinner one 
night, to a young Tory who ridiculed politi- 
cal theories, " the French nobility of a hun- 
dred years ago said they could aff"ord to 
laugh at theories. Then came a man who 
wrote a book called the ' Social Contract.' 
The nobles could laugh at his theory, but 
their skins went to bind the second edition 
of his book ! " 

I, for my part, do not share the optimistic 
delusions of the average post-prandial ora- 
tor of Uncle Sam. 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 22 1 

His big talk about his country does not 
^2l7.A^ me. 

Our political philosophies are so much in- 
fluenced by what we eat and drink ! 

I know that a " Pudding Nesselrode " is 
apt to reconcile a fellow to the Czar of 
Russia, and that, after taking a " Punch 
Cardinal," a man is not likely to quarrel 
with the Church of Rome. 

I try to keep my judgment unruffled. 

And when I am asked to go into ecstasies 
over the politics and politicians of Uncle 
Sam, I am much inclined to exclaim with 
Joseph de Maistre : 

" People are continually citing America 
as an example. I know nothing that puts 
me so much out of patience as the praise 
heaped on this child, still in its swaddling- 
clothes. Let it grow up, and we shall see !" 

THE END. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS, 



I beg to announce that I will shortly 

publish a series of translations 

of popular French novels 

at popular prices. 



I have also some rare old books, curious 

autographs, and fine prints on 

hand, which I offer at 

reasonable figures. 



JOHN DELAY, 



DEALER IN 



Bools, Prints, anJ Antosraplis. 



SOLE AGENT IN THE U. S. FOR 



ETIENNE CHARAVAY, OF PARIS. 



816 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 



